Being scared every time I saw Peter O'Toole took years off my life

For the five of you that read this, you should add another blog to your bookmarked pages: The Insider. I co-write an entertainment page each Thursday in the paper called The Insider, and now we have our own blog that we'll be updating daily. You should check it out. All the time. Seriously. And leave comments. We had way too much fun live-blogging the Oscars last night.

Things I'm happy about: "The Departed" winning Best Picture.
Things I'm sad about: Jennifer Hudson winning; Mark Wahlberg not winning; Peter O'Toole scaring the crap out of me every time he was on screen; me losing almost four hours of my life watching the ceremony.

Things I Plan On Doing This Summer

1. Go to Disneyland with my brother.
2. Make my brother buy me funnel cakes, pretzels and balloons, as well as take my picture with Disney characters, at Disneyland.
3. Embarrass my brother by wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and a fanny pack at Disneyland.
4. Trick my brother into riding a scary ride, and enjoy watching him scream like a girl, at Disneyland.
5. Visit Dani in Orange County and embarrass her by taking pictures of locations seen in "The O.C."
6. Sit in the shade, covered in sunscreen, at the beach with Dani, refusing to be in direct sunlight for more than 15 minutes.
7. Go to a professional baseball game.
8. Go to a Spurs playoff game (if you feel like buying me tickets, go for it).
9. Spend as much time as possible away from Abilene.

That's all I can come up with for now. Most of this is contingent upon my vacation request being approved, but with the stressful work environment and a creepy weather environment (see below), my birthday (the date of the Carlson Birthday Disneyland Extravaganza) can't get here soon enough.

The sky is filled with dirt:

I bet even Jesus would weep if he read this.

The Arts page for my university newspaper has been hijacked by illiterate hipsters. I know this because of this stunning display of inadequacy (something that is, apparently, supposed to be a review of "Pan's Labyrinth"). Thanks to Facebook, I learned that this contributing "writer" is dating a guy named Tripp, who contributed part two of his enthralling three-part look at the Wii to the same page. They aren't journalism majors, and they aren't staff writers. But they've somehow earned prime real estate on the page too many people who cared too much about movies spent too many hours working to make better. I shouldn't care, but it still makes me want to weep. Weep for humanity, weep for the future, weep for my school. Weep.

So go ahead -- read it. What isn't fun about criticizing sophomore English majors who think "Set in 1944 in the depths of a Spanish forest is Guillermo Del Toro's latest film, Pan's Labyrinth" is a good lede?

My favorite responses from people I sent the article to:

Malinda: "Wow. I was bored two sentences into that. It reads like a research paper for Freshman English."

Dani: "The plot thickens ?!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That sentence alone should be enough to give Doc (journalism professor) a coronary."

Daniel: "Did you send me that so I would be upset? So I would hate this stupid girl who wrote the review? So her absolutely stunning lack of talent and inability to write a good sentence would worm its way into my mind and render me unable to write on my own? I could go through every sentence of her review and refute it either based on style or her reading of the film. Every. Sentence."

See? It's fun.

There is nothing not funny about this video.

The glove compartment isn't accurately named -- and everybody knows it

The weekend was spent staying up into the wee hours of the morning and lamenting our newfound adulthood.

For some reason, I wrote that sentence on Sept. 4 of last year, intending to follow it with other sentences, but I didn't. It's been harder and harder to maintain this blog, perhaps because so many come here from friends' and relatives' blogs expecting to be just as entertained. I had started that post in September to talk about post-graduate life, but I must have lost interest.

That weekend had been spent, though, with a fellow graduate and two fifth-year friends. We stayed up watching a crappy movie on the Sci-Fi Channel on which a computerized saber-toothed tiger was set loose in a Jurassic-Park like theme park. It liked to behead people using its teeth. Lizzie McGuire's dad was in it, and we wondered about his future career possibilities while stealing music from each other's iPods. (Looking at IMDb, it appears to be called "Attack of the Sabertooth." Enjoy.) When the drizzle began, my friend (we'll call him Jeff) suggested we go for a walk. Oh wait -- a bike ride! What else is there to do at 2 a.m. in West Texas?

So we drove to his house to commandeer his (male) roommates' bikes. My legs were too short for most of them, and my flip flops had no traction, so I was stuck riding a stunt bike, barefoot, through the late-night drizzle. Let's ride around campus! The trek began well enough, but soon I lost my balance and couldn't start riding again. My friends had to keep stopping, trying to explain to me just how to ride a bike while trying not to laugh and enjoy the circles they were biking around me.

I rode for 10 seconds, then stopped. Then I was stuck for several minutes. Repeat. My feet were killing me, so I traded bikes with another friend and attempted to get going. Too hard. After standing on the curb and kick-starting the bike, I was able to maintain a balance and ride for about two minutes. Then my friend (we'll call her Courtney) rode up alongside me on the sidewalk, trying to tell me how to shift the gears and forcing me to look at the handles. There went the sidewalk, and there went my bare feet, right into a pile of mud. I couldn't get back on the bike, at least not for a while. I was that kid on the playground begging for recess to be over so they can go read. "This is the opposite of fun. Can we please go home now?"

We retreated, having made it not even a fourth of the way around campus. Riding back to the house seemed easy, for some reason. I drove home, accompanied by me fellow graduate, to hang my muddy jeans up and wonder why our spontaneous adventure had floundered.

The fifth-years graduated in December in a lackluster ceremony I plaid solitaire through. My warnings about the overratedness of adulthood had to be learned the hard way for them, though, but at least I was able to entertain them by being a 22-year-old who can't ride a bike.

Confession Time

9:38 p.m.
Daniel: sometimes i wonder what would happen if i just went home
9:40 p.m.
me: sometimes i wonder what would happen if i started screaming at people mid-conversation. or just hit them. just to see how shocked they would be and what they'd say.
...
but i'm weird
9:44 p.m.
Daniel: sometimes i wonder what would happen if i barked at people in a crowd to get them to move
me: sometimes i think about all the ways you could kill a person, or at least seriously injure them, using household objects
9:45 p.m.
Daniel: sometimes i wonder what my coworkers look like naked
9:46 p.m.
me: sometimes i practice acceptance speeches for prestigious awards in my head
9:47 p.m.
Daniel: sometimes i pretend i'm playing guitar and my friends are watching me in awe
9:56 p.m.
me: (i totally blanked. i'm thinking ...)
10:08 p.m.
Daniel: sometimes i wonder if anyone would notice if i killed tony, the old man who works here
10:10 p.m.
me: do you seriously think that?
10:13 p.m.
Daniel: ... no

Have some Style (and keep people like me in a job)

I like Garrison Keillor's latest column. He writes in that loopy, run-on sentence fashion of older men, but he entertains:

It seems to me, observing the young in coffee shops, that something is missing from their lives: the fine art of holding a newspaper. They sit staring at computer screens, sometimes with wires coming out of their ears, life passing them by as they drift through MySpace, that encyclopedia of the pathetic, and check out a video of a dog dancing the Macarena. It is so lumpen, so sad that nobody has shown them that opening up a newspaper is the key to looking classy and smart. Never mind the bronze-plated stuff about the role of the press in a democracy -- a newspaper, kiddo, is about Style.

Whether you're sitting or standing, indoors or out, leaning against a hitching post or with your brogans on a desk, a newspaper gives you a whole rich vocabulary of gesture. You open it with a flourish and a ripple of newsprint, your buoyant self-confidence evident in the way you turn the pages with a snap of the wrist, taking in the gray matter swiftly, your eyes dancing over the world's sorrows and moving on, crinkling the page, snapping it, rolling it, folding the paper in halves and quarters, tucking it under the arm or tapping it against the palm. Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Jimmy Stewart, all the greats, used the newspaper to demonstrate cool. Sitting and staring at the profile of Kerri ("Dreamer of dreams") Jodhpur, 18, of Muncie, Ind., and her cat Snowball is not cool.

A man at a laptop is a man at a desk, a stiff, a drone. Where is the nobility here? He hunches forward, his eyes glaze, and beads of saliva glitter in the corners of his mouth and make their way down his chin as he becomes engrossed in the video of the fisherman falling out of the boat. A newspaper reader, by comparison, is a swordsman, a wrangler, a private eye. Holding a newspaper frees you up to express yourself, sort of like holding a sax did for Coltrane. Just observe a few simple rules.

1. If you want to make a serious impression, don't buy one paper, buy three or four. A person walking into Starbucks with four papers folded under his wing is immediately taken for a mogul. If he's young, he's a software mogul. If he is unshaven and wearing pajamas under his raincoat, he is an eccentric mogul, perhaps a Mafia kingpin.

2. Take your sweet time opening the paper. You already know what's in it, boss man, you only read it so you'll know how much other people know, so there's no big rush.

3. Once you open it, never look up unless someone speaks your name. Don't be distracted just because a leggy blonde has crossed the room, leaving a trail of cigarette smoke and Chanel No. 5. You're the actor so let others be the audience, you be the scene.

4. Scan the front page, check out the headlines, but don't pore, don't be a drudge. Be cool. Jump to the sports page, then the comics, then the society page, then editorials. That's the beauty of the inverted pyramid news story. A glance is usually good enough.

5. Always rip out a story or two and tuck it in your pocket. Not casually, like it was a recipe for meatballs, but with urgency and purpose. This creates an indelible aura of mystery.

6. When you're done with a paper, clap it shut and toss it aside. (You can't do that with a laptop.) A gesture of dismissal that says, "Feh! Enough of this pettiness! Onward! To the barricades!"

7. All of this should take no more than 20 minutes.

I know a man who is almost my age, and so he grew up with ink on his fingers and then, for reasons he couldn't explain, he switched over to reading online publications and checking out the Times and the Washington Post and Slate, and then found a Web site with streaming video in which a mature Austrian woman with braids tells you what to do. He sits, his eyes locked to hers, as she says, "You vill eat, mein little schweinhund" and upbraids him for imaginary transgressions. If he reaches for the off switch, she screeches at him and a Rottweiler growls low in its throat and so he is a prisoner of his laptop, his days shot. This sort of thing happens all the time. The Internet will eat you alive. With newspapers, you're in and out, 20 minutes. It's your life, you choose.

The folks at EW.com's PopWatch blog asked readers to chime in on which movies, actors and TV series we felt were snubbed by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for Golden Globe noms. Me, being a geek, wrote in about my love for all things "Battlestar Galactica," and my fellow geeks took notice: Click on this to see my comment on the site.

At least I can console myself when the second half of season three returns Jan. 21. But if "Heroes" wins the award, I'm hunting down a HFPA voter.

They're after us

Apparently, someone left a dead squirrel in my parents' mailbox yesterday. My brother had to pry the gut-spewing body out with garden shears, dumping the remains into the trash bag my father was holding. Off to the dumpster! Later, my mom and brother cleaned out the mailbox.

But what does this mean? Who on the block has it out for the Carlsons? What did we do to deserve such a cryptic message? Did we run over a family's dog and not notice? Let's hope the bloody threats stop here. Most animals won't fit in a mailbox. Or will they?

Great Op-Ed piece in The Washington Post today:

Message From a Megachurch
By E.J. Dionne Jr.

American politics took an important turn last week at a church in the foothills of Southern California's Santa Ana Mountains.

When Rick Warren, one of the nation's most popular evangelical pastors, faced down right-wing pressure and invited Sen. Barack Obama to speak at a gathering at his Saddleback Valley Community Church about the AIDS crisis, he sent a signal: A significant group of theologically conservative Christians no longer wants to be treated as a cog in the Republican political machine.

For his part, Obama, the former community organizer from Chicago, showed why he is this moment's hottest commodity in 2008 presidential politics, even though he has not entered the race yet.

For a quarter-century since the rise of the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, white evangelical Christians have been widely seen as a Republican preserve. No one did a more comprehensive job of organizing them than President Bush, and he carried the white evangelical vote in 2004 over John Kerry by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1. Many of the most politically active evangelical leaders have insisted that the morally freighted social issues -- abortion, stem-cell research, same-sex marriage -- took priority over all questions.

Enter Warren, or Pastor Rick, as he likes to be known. Warren is no political liberal. On the contrary, his views on the hot-button issues are reliably conservative, and he has said that members of his sprawling Orange County congregation probably vote overwhelmingly Republican.

But Warren speaks for a new generation of evangelicals who think that harnessing religious faith too closely to electoral politics is bad for religion, and who are broadening the evangelical public agenda to include a concern for global poverty and the scourge of AIDS.

Warren is also the most gifted religious entrepreneur since Billy Graham. Warren's book "The Purpose Driven Life" has sold in the tens of millions, and his specific model for themegachurch has spread all over the country. He is not building a new denomination. He is building a new network, and it's powerful. Warren and his wife, Kay, have made alleviating the AIDS crisis in Africa one of the central components of their mission.

And thus it came to pass that when Warren called a conference at his church last Friday on World AIDS Day, among those he invited were two potential presidential candidates. It was unsurprising that one of them was Sen. SamBrownback, the Kansas Republican and a loyal social conservative who has taken up the AIDS issue with passion and commitment.

But when the other invitee turned out to be Obama, parts of the old evangelical political apparatus went after Warren as a heretic. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, declared that Obama's views on abortion -- Obama is pro-choice -- represented "the antithesis of biblical ethics and morality" and insisted that Warren had no business inviting him to Saddleback.

Warren's church issued a statement reaffirming its strong opposition to abortion, but Warren did not back down. Indeed, he seemed to revel in rejecting the old evangelical political model. "I'm a pastor, not a politician," Warren told ABC News. "People always say, 'Rick, are you right wing or left wing?' I say 'I'm for the whole bird.'"

When it came his turn to speak, Obama took on the moral message of evangelical AIDS activists -- and then challenged them.

"Let me say this and let me say this loud and clear: I don't think that we can deny that there is a moral and spiritual component to prevention," he declared. "In too many places . . . the relationship between men and women, between sexuality and spirituality, has broken down and needs to be repaired."

Then Obama got to what "may be the difficult part for some," as he put it, that "abstinence and fidelity, although the ideal, may not always be the reality."

"We're dealing with flesh-and-blood men and women, and not abstractions," Obama said, and "if condoms and potentially things like microbicides can prevent millions of deaths, then they should be made more widely available. . . . I don't accept the notion that those who make mistakes in their lives should be given an effective death sentence."

That Obama received a standing ovation suggests that Warren is right to sense that growing numbers of Christians are tired of narrowly partisan politics and share his interest in "the whole bird." In their different spheres, Warren andObama are both in the business of retailing hope.

One more thing: If you read Obama's speech, you'll realize he demonstrates a much truer Christian spirit than the GOP masterminds who have recently tried to push people away from Obama by pointing out that his middle name is Hussein.

Abilene is a black hole, a mysterious place that will suck you in and kill your soul. Oh, and you can never leave. Just like on "Lost."

Oh, friends are so nice. They make it out of Abilene, move to Austin, are surrounded by Whole Foods stores and bicyclers who wear LiveStrong bracelets and think they know everything. At least they have your best interest at heart (and will procrastinate with you while you're both bored at work):

Malinda: let's go to the martini bar when I come in town
me: it's only open on Thursdays
:-/
sorry
Malinda: only thursdays?
me: yep
Malinda: that's gay
stupid abilene
i ate that town
HATE
not ate
sheesh
me: haha
i like that it's only open thursdays. they have events there on the weekends
Malinda: i think it's stupid
it'll probably close down in a few months
me: haha
or not
Malinda: only trashy joints make it in abilene
me: last time i went, they had like 250 ppl there, up from 75 the week before. we'll see
you just don't like abilene
don't hate on the warehouse
Malinda: i don't like abilene
and I don't like that you're starting to give in
you have to get you out
STAT
me: i know, i know
Malinda: it's going to take you over
and then you'll be growing old in abilene
at christian village
"neighbors to ACU"
and you'll drive slow
and get mad at liberals
me: is that my future? will i at least be married?
Malinda: nope
and you'll be angry
me: when will this happen? if i don't get out of abilene by a certain time?
Malinda: in the next year
time is of the essence
me: well, that was a nice glimpse into my future
i think i'll put that on my blog
Malinda: and you'll still be writing on your blog
and you'll be the old crazy woman who writes into the optimist
condemning them to hell
for their liberal/unchristian views
me: does abilene warp people's minds?
Malinda: yes
makes you see things
like LOST
watch out for the monster of black smoke
me: am i going to see a horse in the jungle?
Malinda: still the weirdest thing ever
maybe your missing son
all wet
pointing at you
or your dead brother
and then you'll die
me: aw
Malinda: and everybody will think you're crazy
me: so what's the game plan for getting me out of here?
Malinda: did i get you scared?
me: was that the goal?
Malinda: of course
me: well, i have a feeling most of that won't happen, but yes: i need to get the hell out of here

'Cause our children are watching us, they put their trust in us, they're gonna be like us

In case you haven't read this yet, you need to. Daniel has brilliantly summed up the hypocrisy surrounding the Dixie Chicks controversy. I stood next to a poster for the documentary "Shut Up and Sing" a few weekends ago, waiting in line to see "Casino Royale." I was with a conservative -- and I mean owns Ann Coulter books and CDs of Confederate music conservative -- friend. He essentially likened the Chicks to terrorist-lovers, saying it's people like them who want to quit fighting in Iraq and let terrorists win. I'm assuming he liked the Chicks before their 2003 concert. Talk about not staying the course. He said he'd "vote with his dollar" and refuses to support them and the movie about them.

As someone who knows what it's like to receive hate mail -- the likes of which I also believe were made worse because of my gender -- the only thing I can do to combat that type of hypocrisy is to vote with my dollar as well, refusing to change my support for an artist if I disagree with their politics or lifestyle. I don't care what they say at their concerts; what I care about right now is that their latest album, "Taking the Long Way," is amazing -- one of the top albums of the year. And I'll keep listening to it.

Why did I have to be born with an addictive personality?

To say I'm excited about the upcoming
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix film is an
understatement. Malinda and I have hatched a plan that includes me
taking July 13, 2007 off from work, driving to Austin and standing in
line for hours at one of theDrafthouses to see the show together. We'll
need moral support for the parting of Sirius because yes -- I treat
fictional characters as if they are real. Watch the trailer here. Now. Also watch this HBO sneak peek with extra behind-the-scenes footage.

Side note: I'm annoyed they changed the writing on his hand, as seen on the picture at above, to "I will not break rules." In the book, as begins in chapter 13, "Detention with Dolores," Harry is forced to carve "I must not tell lies" into his hand until he bleeds -- an important part of the book and a tie-in with Harry being considered a liar by most of thewizarding world. So why change it? Why change something so minute? Why screw with crazy-obsessive fans' minds? Why?

Second side note: I think I've found someone with hands as white as mine. Now I know I should move to England.

Don't be offended by my frank analysis -- think of it as personality dialysis

So, this conversation is what happens when someone like Robert Altman dies, you work in a newsroom and you talk online to your brother, who also works in a newsroom and happens to be a movie buff:

me: the newsroom is arguing on whether or not robert altman dying is big enough news because most people wouldn't know who he is.
Daniel: [weeps]
[hangs self from rafter after carving "brooks was here"]
i hate this world
IT HAS TO BE IN YOUR PAPER
if you don't wanna do p. 1, fine
reefer it and put it wherever you put arts stuff
but FOR THE LOVE OF HOLY F***ING CRAP IT'S LEGITIMATE NEWS
me: haha, yeah, it's going in the paper
but, we were debating whether he was important enough
the managing editor said the average person doesn't know who he is
Daniel: he was one of the best directors of the 20th century
me: or can name more than one of his movies
Daniel: MAYBE IT'S OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO EDUCATE PEOPLE AND TEACH THEM SOMETHING IN THE PAPER
i swear to f**k i will kick your managing editor in the balls
what a retarded logic
"i don't know him, therefore no one does, or will care"
jeez
me: haha
Daniel: oh man
i will fly to texas in december and drive to abilene and punch him right in his tiny balls
holy CRAP
what a moron
i've only seen a few altman movies, but know that his death is big news
guy had an amazing career
incredibly influential
no altman, no p.t. anderson
man
man man man
talk me down, kid
give me some good news
me: haha
ummm
today is your last day of work for the week
that's good news
Daniel: true
ok
a little better now
just
man
your editors make me sad
for humanity
me: haha
that was a nice little rant
it was him against everyone else
Daniel: good
me: and he felt pretty strongly about it for some reason
Daniel: tell him: "my brother daniel's coming for you. he's riding tonight and bringing hell with him"
or something equally intimidating
me: will do
Daniel: "my brother will hunt you until the sun burns out. he knows where you sleep. he will kill you"
me: we're running a brief on his death, but we're grouping it with a bunch of celebrity news, like michael richards, o.j.'s book, jackson and the hobbit, etc. our complaint was that altman doesn't belong in that category, but he said he does because he's not in the ranks of spielberg or lucas. we argued that (obviously), but his point was that he wasn't as popular, not that he wasn't as good. he said the average reader won't know who he is.
blah.
Daniel: HOLY MOTHERF**KING SHITBALLS
I HATE YOUR EDITOR SO MUCH I COULD PISS BLOOD
NOT AS GOOD AS SPIELBERG OR LUCAS?
ALTMAN WIPES HIS ASS WITH LUCAS!
YOU THINK THE PASSING OF ONE OF THE TOP AMERICAN DIRECTORS OF ALL TIME IS ON PAR WITH F**KING O.J.?!?!
CRAP CRAP CRAP
CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAP
talk me down
TALK ME DOWN
hurry HURRY
me: i'm laughing too hard
he's dumb
he doesn't know anything
Daniel: HE'S BEYOND DUMB
THE TURDS I LEAVE IN THE TOILET ARE DUMB
YOUR EDITOR IS A SHITCAN RETARD
WHO DOESN'T DESERVE TO MAKE NEWS DECISIONS
[panting]
oh man
MAN
me: easy now
this is why you moved away
and one day, my friend, i will too
Daniel: ths is ttrue
i can't even type right
balls
balls
poop
piss up a rope
me: now we're joking that we should go out and ask the 'average reader' if they know who the managing editor is
Daniel: hahahaha
nice
i think you should all take turns giving him licks
with a belt
come on
MASH
MASH, people
not the stupid tv show
the great movie

... aaaand scene.

So that's what "We Three Kings" is about.

This drives me absolutely insane. INSANE. An excerpt:

Christians gather around the world each Christmas to sing about "poor baby Jesus" asleep in the manger with no crib for his bed.
But the Rev. Creflo Dollar looks inside that manger, and he doesn't see a poor baby at all.
He sees a baby born into wealth because the kings visiting him gave him gold, frankincense and myrrh. He sees a messiah with so much money that he needed an accountant to track it. He sees a savior who wore clothes so expensive that the Roman soldiers who crucified him gambled for them.
Dollar sees a rich Jesus.
"He was rich, he was whole, and I use those words interchangeably," says Dollar, senior pastor of World Changers Church International, a 23,000-member College Park, Ga., church that broadcasts its services on six continents.
Dollar is part of a growing number of preachers who say that the traditional image of Jesus as a poor, itinerant preacher who "had no place to lay his head" is wrong.
"Did Jesus have money? Well, the Bible was clear. Kings brought him gold," Dollar says. "Did Jesus have money? It's clear. He had a treasurer to keep up with it."

Note to self: Don't call your editor a 'martyr' during a meeting.

Here's some of the stuff I do on our Thursday entertainment page. I have a TV column and this week printed feedback I've received. Man oh man did I clean them up and correct mistakes. Seriously -- if you're going to send a letter to a newspaper or other publication, at least run spell check, people.

November 2, 2006

They're sharpening the ax:
Word has it that "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," despite receiving an order last week for three more scripts, will be cancelled. The script ordering was probably due to contractual issues, according to Entertainment Weekly, rather than a sign of hope from NBC in the show. NBC is disputing the rabid rumors, but who knows how long the show will actually last. "Friday Night Lights" ran in its place Monday, drawing a larger crowd than its showing the previous week and beating "Studio's" ratings as well.

This saddens me. The show that criticizes the state of TV by having its own show go against the network grain by being "controversial" and in turn receiving high ratings is in reality suffering from low ratings and the expected ax from its network. Now that's irony.
One reader disagreed with my open letter to Aaron Sorkin, "Studio 60's" creator, two weeks ago. Read on to see what she had to say, as well as my response.

Backtalk

Feedback for Oct. 19 column (An open letter to Aaron Sorkin)
Dear Sarah,
I have been reading your reviews in the new Life sections, and I have to say we are of two very different minds. I love "Heroes" and am not a comic book fan, but a 34-year-old mother of three. I like "Smith," and thought it was not really given a chance. And I like "Studio 60." I think you may have missed the first episode. The producer went crazy or if you ask me, he went sane! His rant about television was right on. I don't think "Studio" is meant to funny, but meant to be introspective. If you want funny, watch "30 Rock." You will find funny, or somewhat funny -- I can't really decide yet. I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I just hope that maybe, just maybe TV networks will hold on to the good shows that need some ... time.
Thank You,
Amy

Amy,
I think we're more like-minded than you assert. I like "Studio 60" and agree about the sorry state of TV (and yes, I saw the pilot, and wrote about it here). But I maintain the show-within-the-show's comedic sketches needed to be just that: comedic. The heavy-handed, preachy plotlines are wearing everyone down, and what could have been an amazing show is buckling under its own self-importance.
Also, I never said "Smith" was bad; I just said that it was cancelled. I never watched an episode. And I have to disagree with millions of people out there about "Heroes." I may give it another shot out of boredom, but it's just not great.
Sarah

Feedback for Oct. 26 column ("The Class" isn't funny)
To Sarah:
"The Class" is not as funny as I would have hoped it would be. However, there are funny shows on TV. I laugh out loud every time I watch "According to Jim" and "Two and a Half Men." Both are hilarious. Why are they not getting more recognition? Instead, "The Office" gets all the awards. "The Office" is one of the most stupidest shows I've almost sat through. No one I know watches it either.
Linda

Linda,
You cut me deep by calling "The Office" stupid. It gets all the awards because it's one of the smartest comedies on TV, claiming the title now that the brilliant "Arrested Development" is off the air. These aren't sitcoms; they're witty and eccentric, which makes it harder for these shows to gain an audience. I'll have to take your word on "According to Jim" and "Two and a Half Men" -- I just can't bring myself to watch them.
Sarah

This has to be the funniest e-mail I've ever received from my parents:

Ok, get this, your father managed to set himself on fire last night.

I had to work until 8 p.m. last night, so he was coming to pick me up. He had Rusty in the truck (of course) and was dressed in his usual shorts and tee shirt topped off with his robe and slippers. Just setting the scene.

Right around the corner, at the stop sign, a girl had stalled her car. He stopped to see if she needed help. He told her he had to pick me up, but would be right back. He then set out a flare.

You know what's coming.

He said the girl lunged at him, saying "You're on fire!" and slapping at his chest. Now he's got a hole bigger than a quarter burned through his robe and a slightly singed tee shirt. Not surprisingly, she was gone by the time we got back. (Can't you just hear the story she told?)

He was offended when I snickered. I really think this tops me pinching my fingers in the garage door.

Mom

There's a fine, fine line between love and a waste of time.

I'm heartbroken. I had wanted so badly for "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" to be a success, having worshipped Aaron Sorkin ever since my dad and I spent two days watching a marathon of season one of "The West Wing" on Bravo a few Thanksgivings ago. I tear up at every "WW" episode in its first two seasons, and would vote for Bartlett in a second, if only he were real. I wanted "Studio 60" to be just as grand, but it's just not working.

Now, word has it that a cancellation is near for the bloated drama-with-comedic-bits-that-aren't-funny. Three more episodes have been ordered, but that may just been contractual. How ironic that a show about a network fighting against the general suckiness of TV and calling viewers to a higher level of standard isn't working, and will get the ax from its real network that its show within a show isn't. "Studio's" fake show's ratings are soaring, but for no reason. "Studio's" ratings are plummeting, for all the right reasons. Perhaps this proves that Sorkin's idealistic venture is too out of base with reality; neither the show or the show within a show are great, but for some reason, he can't see that. Unfortunately for him, everyone else can. At least we'll have the DVDs.

Update! West Texans not only retarded, but unethical.

It appears the video of the 5-year-old in the toy machine may have been staged. The cameraman from a local news station claims he arrived at the scene after they'd unlocked the machine but before they took the boy out. The worker from the machine company and the boy's mother say that the boy was already out, and when the cameraman arrived, he asked them to put the boy back in. Read the whole story.

The public should be informed when images or sounds are re-enacted, according to the code of ethics for the Radio-Television News Directors Association and Foundation.
The National News Service, which distributes video to member TV stations, has not pulled the video of Joshua. An employee said discussion with Vodak (news director for local TV station) confirmed that the video was not staged.
ABC NewsOne, a news service for ABC affiliates, did pull the video from its news server and alerted its clients after a "Good Morning America" producer called Joshua's mother and was told the video was staged.
"We don't stage anything," said Jeffrey Schneider, a senior vice president at ABC News. "It's completely against our ethics."

Awesome awesome awesome.

West Texans: Yes, we're that retarded.

Oh, making national news is fun.

First up: A wedding announcement in the San Angelo newspaper made David Letterman:




AND secondly: A five-year-old crawled into a crane-operated toy vending machine at the Spaghetti Warehouse in the mall. He was in there for about 45 minutes while the restaurant called a worker from the machine manufacturer to come unlock the machine. Watch the video of every kid's dream.


Now, I went to Spaghetti Warehouse yesterday with a reporter to see how he got in the machine. The flap opening to collect prizes was big enough to crawl through, and there was an alcove that he could have crawled under, leaving enough room for the flap door to close. But how the crap he climbed up into the top part is beyond me, the plastic guarding the toys being way above his head. He must have shimmied up there like a spider monkey.

Interestingly, this story aired locally Monday and was picked up by various NBC affiliates and made Keith Olbermann's oddball countdown. When did the paper learn about it? Wednesday. It was the top story on the front page for Thursday. Awesome.