the blog quebecois

The new (well, it's been running on HBO, I think, for a while now, but this is its Canadian debut on Showtime) Larry David show, Curb Your Opportunities is on tonight.

It's gotten rave reviews, so I suppose I'll tape it and look at it tomorrow.

Correction: I'll tape it and then toss the cassette into the pile of tapes that I've been meaning to look at for several years now . . .

A plug for a website I happened across by accident.

Jump The Shark is an obscure reference to an obscure episode of Happy Days, and signifies the moment when you realized that the show was truly in the toilet.

It's an entertaining look back at a lot of shows that I've forgotten, and a lot that I wish I could forget.

Also the memory of Adrienne Barbeau's stupefying ta-tas, which was (were?) the most mesmerizing feature of Maude.

A horrible show, but . . . O, those zoomers!

I love commercials. They're all too often the best thing on TV, put together with exquisite writing, acting and concept. They're funny. The first Budweiser "Whaasssup?" commercials had me rolling around on the floor, clutching my vitals.

Or was that the time I had pubic lice?

Still don't buy Budweiser. Pubic lice are long gone, too.

Erk. Before the lawyers get involved, I would like to offer a sincere and fulsome (yes, I know what fulsome means, you pedantic nit, that's why it's funny. Geddit?) apology to Mr. Eric Margolis, whom I may have inadvertently slandered in a previous comment, when I called him a "little tosspot."

As an innocent babe of letters, I thought that "little tosspot" meant, well, something like a hideous ceramic knick-knack that you chuck into the garbage upon learning that it is the one and only thing that dear old rich deceased Aunt Sadie (may she roast in Hell) has bequeathed.

Alas, as the title of this blog would indicate, I am perhaps untutored in English idiom; and it was thus to my consternation that I learned that "tosspot" means, in fact, a drunkard.

I certainly have no knowledge of, nor did I wish to imply that, the party of the second part was a part of the party.

Or, for that matter, The Party.

Mr. Margolis' saturnine, roseate glow I might have unconsciously attributed to excessive consumption of Jack Daniels, or possibly magic mushrooms. For this I apologize.

There are other valid explanations, such as high blood pressure, or embarassment.

I understand he blushes furiously when "Afghanistan" and "quagmire" are mentioned in polite company.

I'm a fairly good amateur chess player. I'm not rated, but I guess that I'd be 1900, 2000 on a good day on the FIDE scale. Masters and Grandmasters are about at 2400 and up. Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer are currently rated at 2838 and 2780 respectively.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to my favorite TV show, The West Wing.

Not that I watch it often, but I occasionally click through the channels and come across it and am compelled to observe, the way that you in spite of your better judgment stare at a bad car crash.

It's not just the eternal struggle of virtuous and shiny Democrats versus evil, sweaty (and badly dressed) Republicans.

It's not just the lazy ping-pong dialogue of Aaron Sorkin and his co-writers, which aims at busyness and insouciance but serves mainly to chew up airtime:

"Is it?"

"Is it what?"

"Is it here?"

"Is it where?"

(I suppose it depends on what the definition of "is" is.)

It's not just the conceit that President Bartleby is a doughty battler for civil rights, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, and a furtive smoker to boot. My God, is there no end to the complexity of this man?!

It's when an arrogant crackhead like Sorkin runs his mouth and pisses all over a game I love. Which brings us back to chess. (You knew I'd tie this all together, eventually.)

I don't know why it is, but when movie or TV-makers want to depict an "intellectual" they invariably picture him as hunched over a chessboard, plotting out his next nefarious move.

This is bullshit, basically. The chessplayer only demonstrates his intellect in a very narrow subset of intelligence, namely the attempt to "corner a wooden King in the corner of a wooden board."

Which brings us back to West Wing. (I'm starting to get dizzy.)

President Familiar Quotations is of course a world-class chessplayer, who between solving the Oooga Booga crisis and sternly looking into the camera at strategic moments finds the time to deliver unto his staff crushing defeats over the chessboard.

Anyway, one night I stumbled upon President Bartvinnik preparing to trounce the bald-headed, bearded guy (his name escapes me), but first, to hammer home the point, he barks at his secretary:

"Tell the Rob Lowe character (like I said, I don't watch the show that often) that he's checkmated in ten...(gazing into the distance), no, twelve...

"No. Fifteen moves."

Cut to the Rob Lowe character, in shock at his chessboard, realizing that President Bartakower's awesome command of the game means he is doomed, doomed.

Is this great or what? He can solve the Oooga Booga crisis and play blindfold chess. Hell, I'd vote for the guy.

Problem is, as any serious chessplayer will tell you, the Hollywood image of an omniscient giant mind prowling over the board, calculating each and every move from start to finish is, uh, a Hollywood image.

As Max Euwe, the Danish grandmaster (and true polymath) quipped when asked how many moves he "looked ahead," said, "One, if I'm lucky."

It's true that chessplayers "look ahead," but only in certain situations, like exchanges or sacrifices or in the endgame, with limited pieces on the board.

What chessplayers do look at are patterns. At a glance they pick up on things like X-rayed Royalty or impacted Rooks.

My personal obsession is with Pawn structure. Give me a game against someone with doubled or isolated Pawns and I'll start to probe and poke and prod his defence, until I get slaughtered by a long-range Bishop attack I didn't quite anticipate. Ah, well.

Back to President Bartburne and the bald-headed bearded guy:

Bald-headed bearded guy makes first move.

President Bartablanca strokes chin and says something like:

"Aha! The Evans Gambit!"

Bald-headed bearded guy says:

"The Evans Gambit? There's no such thing!"

President Bartzowitsch replies:

"Yes, the Evans Gambit. It's a derivation of the Giuoco Piano opening, developed in the 19th century..."

I really wish I could have transcribed it better, but I was laughing so hard by this point I was in danger of losing precious bodily fluids.

Mr. Sorkin. I know the Evans Gambit. I've played the Evans Gambit. You apparently know squat about the Evans Gambit.

President Bart-bart-ba-BART-BART (sorry, that's my attempt at "Hail To
The Chief") was correct in general terms.

The Evans Gambit was introduced in 1824 by Captain William Evans and soon became a favorite of the slashing, attacking masters of the Romantic period. It fell out of favor when the suffocating tactics of Emanuel Lasker seemed to counter it, but lately it's had something of a renaissance among younger players, especially the Russians.

It is also indeed an offshoot from the ancient Giuoco Piano opening.

I've enjoyed dropping it on unsuspecting opponents and I've rattled some good players with it.

This, though, is what makes it funny:

White     Black
--------------------
1. e4          e5
2. Nf3       Nc6
3. Bc4       Bc5  <-- This is the bare bones of the Giuoco Piano.
4. b4                     <-- This is where the Evans Gambit starts.

And on it goes. If you're interested, I would recommend the latest edition of Modern Chess Openings, where it's discussed in exhaustive (and I do mean exhaustive) detail.

But I (and the editors of MCO) am humbled by the utter brilliance of President Bartulyubov, and his ability to discern the Evans Gambit upon the first move of the bald-headed, bearded guy.

The match ended, as all Hollywood chess matches seem to end, with tight closeups of the participants shouting:

"Check!"

"Check!"

"Check!"

"Checkmate!"

With nary a glimpse of the board, which leads me to believe that between them they're playing with eight Queens, or possibly they're just pretending.

Guess who won the game. (Hint -- it wasn't the bald-headed, bearded guy.)

The West Wing. You just can't buy comedy this good.

Anyone seen Janeane Garofalo on CNN's Crossfire? (For non-North American readers, a political shout-show that she's co-hosting with Tucker Carlson this week.)

Really, her opinions are too stupid for me to dissect here, so I'll just be catty and laugh at her appearance.

What were you thinking of, girl? The mousy-brown spinster-librarian look is gone, replaced with a greasy punked up blonde hairdo and a wardrobe that looks like it was raided from a Goodwill collection box.

Whatever charm she once had was precisely in that anti-glamorous, anti-Hollywood image. She's still anti-glamorous, anti-Hollywood, but now she's broadcasting it from the seedier stretches of Sunset Boulevard.

She looks like a heroin addict. The big, gaudy tattoo on her right shoulder doesn't help matters.

For someone who was once allegedly a stand-up comic, she doesn't seem to have a lot of stage smarts. She's awful at ad-libbing. She's a terrible interviewer, stepping on applause lines and her own lines alike. She gets thoroughly flustered with direction, i.e., cue cards or camera angles or the director whispering in her earpiece.

Apart from all that, she's wonderful.

Chalk up another one for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Mwhahahahah.

You've seen car commercials on TV, I presume?

The ones with the family minivan rocketing around treacherous corners on the Pacific Coast Highway in full four-wheel-drift?

With tiny little type at the bottom of the screen:

Professional driver on closed course. Do not attempt.

OK, liability and all that. But what am I to make of the new Taco Bell commercial, for something that looks like a chicken stir-fry dish?

Not that I really care, because I wouldn't eat at Taco Bell on a dare.

However, on the bottom of the screen:

White meat not available in Canada.

What, exactly, does this mean? Is there no white meat in Canada? Are there no chickens left in Canada? Must we make do with a dark meat turkey stir-fry? It sounds like something Mom would come up with five days after Thanksgiving.

Or God help us, could this have some connection to the mad cow crisis? A Taco Bell stir-fry with quarantined hamburger, crawling with BSE prions. It's making me gag more than Mom's theoretical turkey concoction.

I'll bet those cute lil' seal pups've got plenty of tasty white meat inside them.

Ronald Reagan was a genius.

That a B actor could become the leader of a vast conservative revolution is all the more remarkable now that CBS has reminded us just how untutored Hollywood people can be when they dabble in politics. If nothing else, that is one conclusion to draw from the scotched CBS biographical mini-series "The Reagans," which — sight unseen — incited conservatives to paint their faces "Braveheart" blue and organize a network boycott.

This is from -- of all places -- the New York Times and it's well worth reading. (Registration might be necessary, but it's quick and easy. Maybe some other day I'll discuss the ridiculous 300 page questionnaire the L.A. Times forces you to answer.)

I think that the Iraq war has had at least one salutary effect, and that is in smoking out the outright dishonesty and bias of much of the Western media.

Again I give you the CBC. On The National tonight, reporter Don Murray described Bush's arrival in London as disembarking from -- and I quote -- "his Imperial Flying Chariot."

Ha, ha. Stop it, Don, yer killin' me. (I'd provide a link to it, but the CBC's website points to the wrong clip, and it doesn't work anyway. Real professional outfit you're running there, Mothercorp.)

This sort of snide, sophomoric editorializing suffuses the CBC's coverage and it's absolutely incinerating whatever credibility it had left.

Not to overlook American and Arab media, who are being blasted by even the Iraqis for their one-sided reports:

U.S. TV network news about Iraq as distorted as al-Jazeera? Checking in from Iraq on Wednesday’s Hardball with Chris Matthews as part of that show’s look this week at “Iraq: The Real Story,” Bob Arnot highlighted a Muslim ayatollah in Iraq who “is furious at the press coverage. He says not only American television, but Arabic satellite TV, such as Al-Jazeera and the Abu Dhabi station, have mis-portrayed the great success that is Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein."

From the Media Research Center. I suggest you read, as they say, the whole thing.

Now here's someone who takes that deux langages stuff seriously.

Laurent at Polyscopique is now running (an impeccable) English translation side-by-side with his original French posts, and it's well worth a look.

You might also want to check his take on the Triumph the Insult Dog imbroglio.

I wasn't going to comment on it, because I almost reflexively blow off anything that gets politicians strutting about with their puffed-up indignation.

Besides, I thought it was just plain dumb. Stupid schoolyard taunts masquerading as humor.

For a more polished example of the latter, the South Park gang came north of the border last night and proceeded to lampoon every Canadian sacred cow in sight, and it was hilarious, especially when they pulled the new P.M. out of his spidey-hole to reveal . . . Saddam Hussein.

Now that was funny. (It might explain a few other things, too.)

Via Being American in T.O.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Late-night comedian Conan O'Brien sought to defuse a flap over a recent segment poking fun at the French-Canadian province of Quebec by issuing a self-deprecating "apology" on Tuesday in French.

"People of Quebec, I'm sorry," the host of NBC's "Late Night" show said in English, as a translator recited in French, with English subtitles, "People of Quebec, I'm an albino jackass."

"We meant no harm with our comedy piece the other night," O'Brien continued, "translated" into French as: "The other night, I wet the bed like a little girl."

"I was a stranger in a strange land and I was very insensitive," he went on, with the subtitle: "I have a small penis."

He says that like it's a bad thing.

"So-called."

That's the CBC's favorite locution when referring to the Bush Administration's War on Terror.

Excuse me, the "so-called" War on Terror.

While I admire this sceptical stand, I wonder why it isn't more consistently applied:

Ba-ba-ba-baaaa! [so-called "music" from The National]

Peter Mansbridge: Let's go to our so-called correspondent, Don Murray. Don, if I may call you that, what's going on now?

Don: If you are in fact the so-called Peter Mansbridge, then I would say this: It looks like a "quagmire."

Peter: Thank you for that. Turning to Anna Maria Cockbrow, what say you?

Anna: Peter, the so-called "quagmire" might yet turn into George Bush's worst nightmare. I say this because I am a woman.

Peter: [chuckle] Yes, you are indeed a so-called woman. Let's go to Wendy Mesley. Wendy?

Wendy! I could'a been a contendah!

Anna: I am afloat in an ocean of lotion. If I cock my brow at you, am I a cocky browser? Or a browsy cocker?

Peter: I have to cut it short here. Thank you; thank you all.

Wendy: Not so fast, you

one pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small
and the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all
go ask alice, when she's ten feet tall.

-- jefferson airplane

[Midrange shot of man sitting on sofa rather incongruously at the end of a dock, overlooking a lake or ocean]

Voiceover: He went to his doctor and asked about see Alice.

[Woman -- presumably his wife -- magically appears beside him. They laugh, cuddle]

Voiceover: And that's exactly what she had in mind.

Ask your doctor if see Alice is right for you.

See Alice. Are you ready?

All right, who's this Alice and why is his wife so anxious for him to see her?

I've seen other commercials for the trollop and she can apparently provoke a four-hour boner, which sounds good, except that you're supposed to go to the Emergency Room and get it deflated or something.

That icy touch of the stethoscope will do it every time.

I was puttering around today and heard this on CNN's Crossfire. Tucker Carlson sets up the guest before the first commercial:

It is time now to convince the voters. Can John Kerry make his case tonight here in Boston? Will he finally tell us what he really thinks or will he take yet another great, bold controversial stand on behalf of children, happiness, and free ice cream?

We'll ask actor and Boston native Ben Affleck, one of the sharpest men in Hollywood and a friend of the charisma-challenged Democratic nominee.

Later, Affleck with co-hosts Robert Novak and Paul Begala:

AFFLECK: Well, I won't say it's bad for the country. A convention like this, I think it's a hallmark of the modern media age and of modern politics, that people feel like they have to script everything so carefully and they have to craft and control stuff. It's not -- that aspect of it in particular is not to my taste, although, on the whole, I believe it's been a very successful and innervating and exciting convention.

NOVAK: Innervating. I agree it's an innervating...

(CROSSTALK)

BEGALA: Yes, innervating.

(CROSSTALK)

AFFLECK: That's a Bob Novak word of the day on the Internet.

BEGALA: Somewhere, President Bush is saying, Karl, Karl, what's innervating mean?

Allow me to be of assistance. The word, apparently unknown to Affleck and Begala (not to mention CNN's transcriber), is "enervating," and it means,

1. To weaken or destroy the strength or vitality of: “the luxury which enervates and destroys nations” (Henry David Thoreau). 2. Medicine. To remove a nerve or part of a nerve.

adj. (-nûrvt)

Deprived of strength; debilitated.

which seems an adequate description of the Democratic convention.

Novak (and more than likely Carlson, too) knew what the word meant and was preparing to have a bit of fun with it.

I guess that being one of "the sharpest men in Hollywood" is roughly equivalent to being a partisan hack like Begala. But that's no surprise, is it?

I found myself watching Rough Cuts on CBC Newsworld. I'd seen the promos for it -- a "documentary" or more accurately an opinion piece called Stupidity and I wasn't much interested in it. But it was the only thing on TV at the time, so there I was, stupidly watching it.

From the production company's website:

Stupidity sets out to determine whether our culture is hooked on deliberate ignorance as a strategy for success. From Adam Sandler to George W. Bush, from the IQ test to TV programming and the origins of the word 'moron', [Albert] Nerenberg examines the "dumbing down" of contemporary culture.

Stupidity careens at warp speed through sound bites on topics from television news and reality TV shows, to Internet sites and popular films. Featuring opinions and comments from some of today's most recognizable figures, cultural critics, authors and academics, including John Cleese and Rick Mercer, Noam Chomsky and David Frum, Salma Hayek and Michael Moore, Stupidity reveals that, despite our culture's extensive access to knowledge and information, humans continue to choose stupidity. The film suggests that unless stupidity is dealt with, we may all be doomed.

Yes, yes; and to echo Keynes, we're all dead in the long run anyway.

About half the show, as you might expect, was dedicated to the proposition that George W. Bush is stupid stupid stupid and they trotted out prize pig Michael Moore to hammer home the point. (Note: There is no link, as CBC, unlike real news organizations such as CBS, doesn't offer transcripts [OK, they do, but they charge $45 for a 1-hour program] so I had to wait for the weekend when the show was rebroadcast so I could tape it and make sure the quote was accurate.):

I mean, really think about the United States, okay? Here we are, a country where one of the founding fathers discovered electricity. Look what we have devolved to. A guy who is proud he was King of the Keggers. [emphasis added]

Odd. I never got the sense that Bush was bragging about his dissolute youth. Never mind that, though. More pertinent is Moore's assertion that Benjamin Franklin (I assume that's to whom he's referring) "discovered" electricity.

Franklin certainly contributed to the theoretical understanding of it, but he was by no means the first to observe the phenomenon. From Wikipedia:

According to Thales of Miletus, writing circa 600 BC, electricity was known to the Ancient Greeks, who found that rubbing fur on various substances, such as amber, would cause a particular attraction between the two. The Greeks noted that the amber buttons could attract light objects such as hair, and that if they rubbed the amber for long enough, they could even get a spark to jump.

[ . . . ]

In 1600 the English scientist William Gilbert returned to the subject in De Magnete, and coined the modern Latin word electricus from (elektron), the Greek word for amber, which soon gave rise to the English words electric and electricity.

[ . . . ]

In June, 1752, Benjamin Franklin promoted his investigations of electricity and theories through the famous, though extremely dangerous, experiment of flying a kite during a thunderstorm. Following these experiments he invented a lightning rod and established the link between lightning and electricity. If Franklin did fly a kite in a storm, he did not do it the way it is often described (as it would have been dramatic but fatal). It was either Franklin (more frequently) or Ebenezer Kinnersley of Philadelphia (less frequently) who created the convention of positive and negative charge.

You want stupidity? Stupidity is airing a quote from Michael Moore without first fact-checking it sixteen ways 'til Sunday.

with gilligan, the skipper too
the millionaire, and his wife
the movie star, the professor and mary ann
here on gilligan's isle

wyle & schwartz

Mr. Sun has obviously put a lot of thought into the optimal strategy for boinking the beauteous Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island:

In this time of war and great tragedy, I have naturally been preoccupied with the big questions. Namely, how would I have bedded Mary Ann if I were Gilligan. The answer? Strategy. I would have used my mind to create a rock solid Mary Ann Nailing Strategy that guaranteed I'd be rockin' the hut on a regular basis.

I mean, he's even drawn up sort of a Power Point chart:

It's all a bit complicated to me, but Mr. Sun will explain all here.

peek in, sneak about
i'm gonna snoop and call you out
i've caught you, your hands are red

no doubt

However, I'm pleased to let you know that I quickly cracked the case.

The case of beer, of course. What case were you thinking of?

jowl by jowl translucent white skin
hair on the back
abe vigoda's dead

parody

No he's not. Abe Vigoda, whom you might recall as the character of Det. Fish on the 70's sitcom Barney Miller is still alive and kicking.

And to prove it, a programmer with a bit too much time on his hands developed a plugin for the Firefox browser that will provide minute-by-minute confirmation of Mr. Vigoda's corporeal integrity:

Part of my daily routine is to check on Abe Vigoda's current status, helpfully provided by the good people at AbeVigoda.com. To help keep me informed on this subject, I decided to write this Firefox browser extension.

When Firefox starts up, this extension automatically fetches Abe Vigoda's current status from AbeVigoda.com, and displays it in a small panel on the status bar. It periodically does so again every so often, so that you always have relatively recent information on Abe Vigoda's status.

I know you're dying -- pun not intended -- to check it, so click here.

That isn't an official Abe Vigoda domain or page, just something put up specifically for this purpose. Poor Mr. Vigoda doesn't seem to have a website, but I found the Abe Vigoda Shrine here.

(Also, the lyrics quoted above are from a remix of Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead".)

Via Diversionz
-----

You might recall this from a couple of months ago -- the TV weatherman who stumbled and bumbled his way through a truly agonizing segment.

Well, I think I found one of his classmates, this time a sportscaster. He's not as comprehensively awful as the first guy; but then, the bar has been set so very, very low.

Via Ace of Spades

Steven Bochco's new series, Over There, gets, uh, mixed reviews from some Iraq War vets:

"Bogus" was the preferred adjective among the eight soldiers -- most of them Iraq vets -- viewing the series pilot last week at Camp Murray, headquarters of the Washington State National Guard in Tacoma.

"Thank God that's over," said a master sergeant as the credits rolled.

The uniformed skeptics dissected the series pilot scene by scene, beginning with the roadside bombing and panicked soldiers. Who, they asked, was pulling security? And what kind of idiot pulls off his helmet after a bombing attack? "In real life, training takes over. Not in Hollywood," said Sgt. Dan Purcell.

The flags on the trip wires got an "F": roadside bombs in Iraq are typically hidden in watermelons, hay stacks, animal carcasses -- not marked for easy viewing. "A flag to mark an i.e.d.? What is that -- like don't land here?" [. . .]

The fast-paced premiere is packed with sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll; cool explosions and close-up gore; cussing and wrought emotion. It opens with the soldiers' goodbyes to family and a nervous flight to Iraq. In an instant -- "Yeah, right" -- the new dudes are belly-down in sand in front of a mosque full of insurgents, with two women accidentally trapped in the trenches, one with a big attitude and little common sense.

"I can do it myself!" she yells at a soldier who tries to help her dig a trench. "You deaf soldier?" It's night, she's totally exposed to enemy fire and, when it starts, it's boy-soldier who has to push her head down to save her.

No wonder the men keep asking, "What do we do about the women?"

You stand back and watch in awe as they unleash their innate woman-power mad skillz to kick-box their way into Baghdad, is what you do, fool.

Via Nealenews

oh, i don`t like the look of the look of today
a great grey cloud is coming our way
so I move through the streets on my own
a-huffing and a-puffing and feeling so alone

jane siberry

Everybody's probably seen it by now, but note that my presentation introduces it with a song. Is that value-for-money or what?

A reporter for NBC was covering the flooding in the northeast US triggered by recent heavy rains and decided to dramatize the coverage.

Michelle Kosinski has been on the scene for Today in New Jersey, working the story. In an apparent effort to draw attention to herself, in yesterday's segment she turned up in hip waders, standing thigh-deep in the flood waters.

Taking her act one step further, this morning she appeared on a suburban street . . . paddling a canoe. There was one small problem. Just as the segment came on the air, two men waded in front of Kosinki . . . and the water barely covered their shoe tops! That's right, Kosinski's canoe was in no more than four to six inches of water!

An embarrassed Kosinski claimed the water was deeper down the street but that her producers didn't want to let her go there for fear she'd drift away. But Katie and Matt, perhaps peeved by her attempted scene-stealing, couldn't resist ribbing her.

A good thing I put off on posting this for a couple of days, as Crooks and Liars turned up a longer version of the video, with Couric and Lauer's reaction.

The direct link doesn't work, so go here and click on the third link (" Video-WMP-East Coast Feed") to view it.

CBC's Rough Cuts ran Naked, a documentary about this silly trend:

Disrobe for dissent, calendars for causes, nudes against nukes. A new phenomenon with old roots is gaining momentum -- busting out, peeling off, and hanging loose, all around the globe.

From Europe to Australia, people of all ages are stripping off their clothes to send messages via the media: "Peace! No Bush! We'd rather go naked than wear fur!"

Since 2001, over 50,000 people have participated in at least 90 nude protest events around the world. At the same time, the �Calendar Girls� of Rylstone, England rocked the world of charitable donations by posing as pin-up girls. These middle-aged moms raised over a million dollars for leukemia, demonstrating what a bit of cheek can do for a cause.

Naked is a thought-provoking and humorous one-hour documentary by Mary Bissell about people who use nudity to affirm their values and fight for their beliefs. From anti-war nude protestors in Marin County, to nudist bicyclists in North Carolina and breast cancer survivors in Calgary, this show reveals the political reasons beneath the very personal act of taking it all off.

I should exempt the breast cancer victims and the English women from my criticism. Those were for personal and charitable, not political, purposes and were discreetly posed. There's a difference between that and marching down the street with your bazongas flapping in tacit support of a dictator.

I've written about this before, when the Dixie Chicks posed nude on a magazine cover during the hoohah that followed their anti-Bush comments.

It's an infantile form of display that supposes that one's argument is so unimpeachable that it requires no elaboration -- or an admission that one has no argument beyond the (imagined) shock and awe of goosepimpled flesh.

I wasn't going to watch it, because most of the women who do this sort of stuff are -- how can I put this gently? -- a bunch of uggos. (Of the men we shall not speak.)

To my surprise, two of the women were strikingly attractive. (I didn't catch their names, or I would have googled around for a picture.) They're sisters -- elegant, poised, and very pretty, in a demure, almost Victorian way. They also had the perkiest, most amazing . . . ringlets.

They claimed that this activity was in no way inconsistent with their self-professed feminism. (One was a Women's Studies student, if I recall.) Much blah-de-blah about the "predatory male gaze," etc. Frankly, I wasn't paying much attention to what they were saying, and none whatsoever when the blouses came off.

The funniest part was when they were speaking to the press after some annoying Vancouver naked bike ride, designed to tie up traffic. There they are, starkers, chatting amiably away when they started yelling at and insulting male spectators who had the temerity to try to take their picture.

I don't get it. They go naked to get attention; then they get miffed because people are paying attention. Much too nuanced for my simple reptilian male brain, I guess.

I suspect that marriage (that evil patriarchal construct) to such an enchanting creature would be possible only with liberal use of duct tape, applied either to her mouth or my ears.

But who can argue with results? These intrepid exhibitionists have an unbroken series of triumphs, from killing off the fur trade, to stopping the Iraq war in its tracks, to electing President Kerry.

What's that? OK, never mind. Newsworld will be rebroadcasting it Tuesday Dec. 6, at 10 p.m. Eastern if you'd like to check out those perky . . . ringlets.

I was wondering aloud a few weeks ago about what to call the occasional posts at that point named "News You Won't Be Seeing On The CBC." CBCWatch, writing to request permission (granted) to repost some of these, suggested "CB No See" or "CBC Unseen," both of which I like. So I shall alternate between them, maybe adding others as I go along.

Following the earthquake that struck Pakistan and parts of India Oct. 8 last year, Canada did what it could, dispatching its Disaster And Relief Team (DART) to the area within a matter of days. They helped many people in very difficult circumstances (with the CBC providing glowing reports documenting the effort). But DART wrapped up its mission Dec. 4, and the CBC packed up its cameras too.

Guess who's still there?

Wall Street Journal:

It was Pakistan's good fortune in those critical days that Adm. LeFever could call in heavy-lift helicopters, particularly the tandem-rotor Chinook, from bases in nearby Afghanistan. Every road into the Frontier Province and the neighboring Azad Kashmir region had been rendered impassable by huge landslides. Every hospital in the region except one had been destroyed. The Pakistan government, which lost nearly its entire civil administration in the region as well as hundreds of soldiers, lacked the airlift capacity to bring adequate relief north and the critically injured south. The Chinooks were among the few helicopters able to reach, supply and evacuate places that, even under normal conditions, are some of the most inaccessible on earth.

Since then, U.S. helicopters have flown 2,500 sorties, carried 16,000 passengers and delivered nearly 6,000 tons of aid. Just as importantly, the Chinook has become America's new emblem in Pakistan, a byword for salvation in an area where until recently the U.S. was widely and fanatically detested. Toy Chinooks (made in China, of course) are suddenly popular with Pakistani children. A Kashmiri imam who denounced the U.S. in a recent sermon was booed and heckled by worshippers. "Pakistan is not a nation of ingrates," a local businessman told me over dinner the other night. "We know where the help is coming from."

Via >bt: brain terminal

As we have seen recently, advertising is a tricky business.

Television advertisements are carefully scripted for maximum advantage. It's a very brief and very expensive artform that packs vital information and brand identity into every one of the 30, 15, or even fewer seconds that they run.

Or not. Witness this ad for Honda. Or possibly an acid trip.

One rule of thumb is: Try not to scare potential customers. This switchblade fight between robot zombies in some post-apocalyptic scrapyard is actually an ad for the Audi RS4 Spider. I found that out by peeking between my fingers. Just show the price. That's frightening enough.

Consumers are rightfully interested in safety. Renault addresses this by crashing food. German and Japanese food tends to explode. If you must drive around in food, the Renault Baguette would seem to be your best bet. It looks like a real bitch to park, though.

Warning: Music, etc.

I don't think Stephen Harper gets due credit for his wit, which is dry and deadly accurate and funny in a way that contrasts very well with the blustery bonhomie of certain politicians (who shall not be named).

When Belinda Stronach defected to the Liberals, one reason she gave was that Harper didn't understand the "complexity" of Canada. Harper quipped that he hadn't noticed that "complexity was Belinda's strong suit."

Like the old saying goes, never bring a pinheaded dilettante to a knife fight.

So I had Mike Duffy's show on, and he played a clip of today's debate in the House of Commons with NDP bore-vivant Pat Martin nattering on about -- what else? -- David Emerson. It went something like "Blah blah blah blah Canadians outraged blah blah blah seducing Emerson."

Canadian Press picks it up from there:

Harper got off the best one-liner of the day when he made a self-mocking joke about his cold persona after being accused of seducing Emerson.

"I don't think I've ever been accused of seducing anyone, even my wife," he said, glancing up into the gallery opposite at Laureen and the Harper children, Ben and Rachel.

"I see there's some agreement in the gallery," the prime minister added when the roars of laughter had died down.

You would think that the CBC -- if only to ingratiate itself with the new boss, who is going to be around a lot longer than the CBC hopes -- would have found the room to include the 10-second clip in The National tonight. But no. That might interfere with its predetermined narrative of Stephen Harper as a soulless, right-wing robot.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. The CBC, after all, has brought us beloved comic icons like Rick Mercer and the Royal Canadian Air Farce, so it could be that it just doesn't understand humor.

Captain's Quarters:

Al Franken gave his listeners an expected going-away Valentine yesterday by announcing that he would seek the Democratic nomination for Norm Coleman's Senate seat. Franken had plowed the ground for this move since the 2004 election, and spent most of last year raising money for the DFL (Minnesota's Democratic Party) in order to bolster his credentials as a serious candidate. However, even some in the DFL apparently consider the comedian a bad joke as a candidate . . .

Franken is a comedian? Why wasn't I informed of this?

One of the few TV shows that I make an effort to catch is FOX News Sunday. If I'm busy I'll record it and watch it later. The interviews are first-rate but what really makes it great is its roundtable discussion in the second half of the show. It's invariably interesting and thoughtful.

Also entertaining. Witness this exchange between Washington managing editor Brit Hume and National Public Radio's Juan Williams. They were discussing the Nevada Democrat Party's boycott of a candidates' debate sponsored by FOX:

WILLIAMS: Well, you know, there's just no question, we live in an era of niche journalism. And in niche journalism, Fox is more conservative. And so what you have is a situation here where Fox is the new guy on the block. We're 10 years old.

And you have people then coming along saying, "Well, Fox is practicing a kind of journalism that is preferential towards Republicans or the White House." And I think it's more conservative and contrarian than anything. But that's all true.

But then it comes to the point where -- so what are you going to do? You don't like the kind of broadcasting that Fox does, although it's quite successful, has a legitimate audience -- people are listening and being informed on the basis of Fox journalism, and then you're going to say, "We're not going to play ball with them."

To my mind, that is contrary to the principles that should be advocated by anybody who says they're liberal or progressive -- whatever kind of language they want -- in this country. You want open and full- fledged, full-throated debate. That's what you want.

And nobody said that this wasn't going to be a legitimate debate with real questions that would put candidates in a position to offer real answers. They would be given time.

[moderator Chris] WALLACE: You're fired up.

WILLIAMS: Well, I think it's crazy that you tell the people [to] shut up. I mean, I sometimes have this argument with Brit Hume. I think he's trying to shut me up. But I think it should be liberals who are flying the flag for open and full-throated debate, you know?

HUME: Shut up, Juan.

WILLIAMS: Thank you, man.

(LAUGHTER)

I don't know if it really comes across in black and white; but let me assure you, it was hilarious enough that I paid the painful price of shooting hot coffee out of my nose.

Hume has impeccable comic timing. Unfortunately nobody -- FOX, YouTube or Google -- seems to have the video up.

The 70's and 80's were indeed the Golden Age for Canadian game shows. I can only remember one, the name of which utterly escapes me. I believe the host was Jim Perry. It was shot daily in Montreal and apparently chose its contestants from that city's sizable junkie pool. At least, they were usually dressed that way and weren't shy about expressing their disappointment -- quite profanely, I recall -- at losing a round or a game. This involved sums the likes of $10 or $20, with $50 to $100 as a grand prize. This was in competition with the big American shows like The Price Is Right and Let's Make A Deal, with prizes of cars, major home appliances and thousands of dollars. So you can probably guess what we were more likely to watch.

I don't seem to have any recollection of Just Like Mom, which according to this Wikipedia entry, had a fairly long run, so I'm guessing it was only shown in Toronto/Southern Ontario.

Just Like Mom was a Canadian television game show which ran from 1980 to 1985 on CTV. A total of 595 episodes were taped at CFTO-TV in Toronto. It was hosted by Steven Young during the show's first season, but from the second season it was hosted by the husband-and-wife duo of Fergie Oliver and the show's creator Catherine Swing. The format was to determine which child and mother knew each other the best through answer-matching as well as the memorable Bake-off Challenge. Three teams, consisting of a young child and his or her mother (or occasionally father), competed on each episode.

Either that or I've developed a case of protective amnesia concerning the utter, utter horror of it all.

The parents were secluded offstage while the children answered several questions. Early in the show's run, they would choose from one of five categories for the questions, while later in the run, a specific question was pre-assigned to each team. During both runnings Fergie Olver would do everything he could to coerce the young children into kissing him. Each host would alternate between asking each child, making two cycles of the three children. Afterwards, the parents would come back and they would be posed same questions to see if they could match the answers their children gave, using a format similar to The Newlywed Game . A correct match on the first questions earned 10, and the the second was worth 15.

I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, etc. have knocked down every attempt at posting this. I finally was able to download a copy and have posted it to my music server, so we'll see how long it survives there.

The Globe and Mail:

It can be seen as a ghoulish attempt to demonize the public broadcaster, to isolate it and, one suspects, an attempt to batter the CBC into compliance. Or one could imagine an even more ominous scenario: the possibility that the current battering is the minority Conservative government’s manner of preparing the public for a major cut to CBC funding and the eventual beleaguerment of the CBC as a fringe broadcaster.

Uh, dude? It is a fringe broadcaster. Try tuning into Newsworld some night and behold the bizarro-land of 911 Truther videos, Michael Moore fantasies and David Suzuki eco-porn laid out for you and your hundred fellow viewers.

I think it`s wonderful that the Canadian government subsidizes your viewing habits; I think that Thorazine drips all around would be cheaper in the long run, though.

Big Hollywood:

(AP) LOS ANGELES - Actor Jason Alexander has apologized for joking during a TV talk show that he considers cricket to be a "gay" sport.

In a blog post, the former "Seinfeld" star explained Sunday what led to his remark on CBS's Late Late Show. He writes that he at first didn't grasp why some might object to the comment, but that subsequent conversations with his gay friends led him to realize his insensitivity.

Alexander's remarks came in Friday's show in which he tells host Craig Ferguson that aspects of cricket make it a "gay game" compared to other sports..

This is not true. Cricket is not "gay." It is, however, incomprehensible. They're sort of making the rules up as they go along.

So Alexander misspoke. According to this collection of clips from Seinfeld, it was by no means an uncommon event.

Salon:

Aaron Sorkin is why people hate liberals. He’s a smug, condescending know-it-all who isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. His feints toward open-mindedness are transparently phony, he mistakes his opinion for common sense, and he’s preachy. Sorkin has spent years fueling the delusional self-regard of well-educated liberals. He might be more responsible than anyone else for the anti-democratic “everyone would agree with us if they weren’t all so stupid” attitude of the contemporary progressive movement. And age is not improving him.