The Law Firm

I swore to everyone I know that I wasn't going to watch this damn show. But I have to see it before I can really make fun of it. So I'm watching it right now.

What a frickin' crock. I hate all of these people already. At the very beginning they get together, grab ass, and measure cocks with one another.

Everything that's wrong with fake law shows like The Practice and what not is exhibited ten fold in this show. It's overdramatized Law and Order crap, complete with the dramatic music in the background, the yelling, and the unnecessarily intense emotions at awkward points in time--all interjected, of course, with commentary from the participants that Nancy just isn't pulling her weight, Olivier is a sore loser, that bitch tryin' to destroy me, etc. Here's my problem: the law isn't interesting if you're not a lawyer. It's actually pretty boring. I tried explaining to Mayo Nurse last week what personal jurisdiction is. She was less than enthralled.

But that's what we do, ya know? It isn't all broken contracts between extremely rich people who it turns out were hiding their lesbian relationship or a revenge murder for attempting female circumcision on the defendant's daughter. And there definitely isn't some perfect piece of evidence that will be found at minute 45 of the episode. Unfortunately, that's what people see on NBC and as a result, it's what the expect in the court room as jurors. They expect ironclad evidence, timely conclusions, and most of all, entertainment. When that's not the case, the presumption is that someone hasn't done their job.

You want a reality tv show about a big law firm? Here it is: write me a memo. I'm going golfing. Watch that, America.

And while we're on the subject of weddings...

Here's a quandry. Marriages are contracts. They used to be contracts between a suitor and the bride's father. In some cultures, the suitor would pay some consideration to the bride's family, essentially buying himself a wife. In others, the bride's family would pay the suitor a dowry in exchange for taking her off their hands.

The modern view of marriage is much different though. It's a contract between two individuals agreeing to enter into a relationship. Many of the customs of a marriage that come from the old view are now being done away with. More and more often, both families split the bill instead of putting it all on the bride's family. At most weddings I've been to recently, the groom is walked down the aisle by his parents. Both families are asked who is giving away the bride and groom. The entire ceremony is supposed to be as reflexive as possible.

All except for one thing. I wear one ring. She wears two. Well before the wedding ever happens, a guy is expected to invest some dough into a nice diamond ring for his fiancee to wear and show off to her friends.

Now here's my beef. Women have initiated many of the changes to the whole marriage process to make it more equal. I agree with all of them and think that they more accurately reflect what a marriage is/should be. So why hasn't there been any move to balance the whole engagement process? Shouldn't I get something neat to show off to my buddies in exchange for the big rock-on-a-ring?

As a means to equalizing engagements for men, women should have to proffer some type of engagement gift. It doesn't have to be a ring. While rings are pretty and shiny, we don't get the same kick out of them that women do. Besides, shiny objects distract us. Clearly not the way to go. Instead, women should take the same amount of money and spend it on a nice engagement plasma screen TV...or perhaps an engagement barbeque. I know that I personally could use some engagement Pings to replace my current set of clubs.

Items like these would go a long way toward serving the same purposes as a ring: they would serve as a symbol of love and commitment, as well as give your special man something to show all of his friends just how lucky he is to be engaged to her.

Dammit, I love equality. After we get this thing moving, we need to see about getting couches in our restrooms too.

Must we?

Fox announces that it plans to remake The Omen.

Joey Washburn - Married.

This is Joey.

This is the guy who:

• refused to wear Nike throughout high school;

swore off jeans and wore nothing but corduroys for three years;

• baptized the backseat of my 1982 Skylark in Bud Light and then proceeded to desecrate an elementary school playground;

shaved his head, pierced his face, and grew a big ass beard in college.

This is Joey immediately after tying the knot at the Orange County home of his fiancee (now wife, I guess).

How bizarre it is to think that I've been friends with this guy since I was 14 years old and that now he has a wife. This really shouldn't come as a shock to me. Hell, I was engaged just seven months ago. Still, it's much different seeing your friend go as opposed to doing it yourself. Besides, I called this one years ago. Back at high school debate camp in Ann Arbor during the summer of 1997, I told Joey that he was going to be carting around a minivan with a wife and three kids someday. He scoffed. This was right after he got done showing off his new purchase of a "I like the Pope, the Pope smokes dope" t-shirt. The little poseur had never even touched dope...

I do hope that the two of them are incredibly happy together. They do make a cute couple...especially now that Joey has hair.

Anyway, many congratulations, Joey and Amanda, and best of luck.

Lifted or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground

Picked up Bright Eyes' Lifted over the weekend. It's one of Mr. Oberst's older efforts, but a damn good one. I think I like this one even more than Fevers and Mirrors.

Pictures from Joey's recent California nuptials to come...

Movie remakes I better never see...

Is Hollywood really that dry on ideas that they can't make anything new anymore? I swear, sitting in the previews for War of the Worlds about two weeks ago, I was bombarded with a string of movies that never needed to be redone (hell, I'd just paid eight bucks to go see one as it is). King Kong? Bad News Bears? Dukes of Hazzard? Batman Begins was at least a unique take on the entire Batman series since it focused on the beginning of Bruce Wayne's transformation, but some of the movies coming down the pipe there is no excuse for. Are you aware that Ellen Degeneres is going to be playing George Burns' character in a remake of Oh God!? I cringe to think who might be playing John Denver's character...

So after a conversation about this with my roommate, this is the beginning of what will probably be an ongoing list of classics that better never be remade (but probably will be):

It's a Wonderful Life - If The Manchurian Candidate isn't safe from reproduction, then I can't imagine this would be. Rand McNally and I agree that Tom Hanks is the likely choice to reprise Jimmy Stewart's original George Bailey, but he's convinced that Donna Reed's Mary Hatch Bailey will be someone like J-Lo. But come on. Tom Hanks in a classic romance? Clearly they'll book Meg Ryan. I think they have a contract together or something. As for Clarence the Angel, he'll have to be played by either Morgan Freeman, who will morph the character into the wise old African American pseudo father figure, or by Ellen Degeneres who will pretty much preserve the same loveable, somewhat bumbling angel that Henry Travers played, with the exception that Clarence will now be a loveable, somewhat bumbling, lesbian angel.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - The Simpsons did a spoof on this a number of years ago where Mel Gibson played Mr. Smith and allowed Homer to rewrite the ending with a massacre on the Senate floor rather than a sudden confession by the corrupt senior senator. Given current remakes, this is no laughing matter. They'd probably try to make it into a comedy like they did with Starsky and Hutch with Jim Carrey or someone like that. Imagine that: some Canuck puck-chaser playing Mr. Smith. Not in my America.

Citizen Kane - Not too worried about this one getting remade. No one liked it the first time around and you'd have to rewrite the script in order to have a different ending, much like Manchurian. That never ends well. Neither does keeping the ending. I found out why War of the Worlds sucked so much: Spielberg kept the same ending as the book. They had the red weed growing over everything, then eventually turning white and dying off because of microbes that the aliens weren't immune to. In a modern context, it was crap. As for Citizen Kane specifically, we're probably looking at some Christian Bale type taking on Orson Welles' character in a modern context. And yeah, this time, at least one of his wives will be played by J-Lo.

Bullitt - Or any other Steve McQueen movie for that matter. I can see Ford Motor Co. salivating over the product placement potential from this one, what with their new Mustang and all. Quite frankly, there is no modern actor who can come even remotely close to taking on this role. If they ever do decide to desecrate the sacred Bullitt, they better dig up Steve McQueen's rotting corpse and strap him into that Mustang because that would be far superior to some douche bag like Brad Pitt doing it.

A Clockwork Orange - I'm actually a bit torn on this one because there's a lot of things that some modern movie tech could do for Clockwork. That, and Stanley Kubrick left out the original ending that appeared in the British print, instead opting for the much darker ending found in the version originally printed in the U.S. I'm afraid that anyone who got their hands on it would overdo the techy crap though. Lots of Aronofsky split screens, etc. That, and who out there could play Alex on par with Malcolm McDowell? That guy creeped the hell out of me.

More to come...

Patty Buch: Why Are They Killing Us?

Once again, Patrick Buchanan attacks the war from the right. If only he could impute his Iraq rationale to the rest of his ideology. Read it here on World Net Daily, but try to avoid reading anything else on there.

Sudden realization...

I know it's kind of cliche to bitch about how there are too many Starbucks (Starbuckses? I dunno) around everywhere, but last I checked there were probably about four or five Starbucks in the entire state of Montana and most of those are packed into a Barnes and Noble. I just realized on my walk to work today that on the three block stretch between the building I work at and Brit's Pub, where I get onto Nicollette Avenue, there are four Starbucks Cafes. Textbook redundancy.

What makes that even more shocking is that no one in Minnesota even drinks Starbucks. They're weird like that. Instead of having Pizza Huts or Domino's everywhere, they stick to the local franchise, Davanni's. Instead of hitting up the Starbucks, these folks roll to Caribou Coffee, another local company. Instead of US Bank, they prefer Twin Cities Financial. So while there are four Starbucks in three blocks, there are also the Caribous, Dunn Brothers, and independent coffee shops to boot. Hell, half of the street level downtown economy here must be coffee. And yet, here I am jockeying Dunnell's Minnesota Digests and WestLaw codes? I'm in the wrong freakin' business.

Pants: What's the point anymore?

Here is a fashion trend I absolutely friggin despise. Right around 1993, some guy, probably down in California, noticed that if he sagged his pants down below his waistline, then they would look baggier, and he would look, by extension, a hell of a lot cooler. Through the 1990s, this evolved into the look where a guy would wear a shirt short enough that you could see about three-to-four inches of boxer. This was the new epitomy of cool. The whole idea is a little moronic, since the point of wearing pants is to shield one's ass and undergarments from the elements, but whatever. It was tolerable.

Today, the sagging pants are out of control. I see this number all around downtown Minnie:























What the hell is that? These guys wear their pants so low that (1) the underwear would be fully visible to anyone walking by and (2) they have use babysteps when walking because the waistline of the pants are down around their knees and constricting stride. There is a customary international norm accepted by all nations that the beltline on a pair of pants does not fall below one's junk. This is a flagrant violation.

Here's the deal. On the human body, there are two well-defined zones for clothing. Covering the torso and abdomen is the "Shirt Zone." Immediately below the Shirt Zone, one finds the "Pants Zone," an area that includes the legs, hips and groin. Some overlap is allowed, but clearly the Pants Zone may not extend past the belly button and the Shirt Zone may not fall below the bottom of a correctly-placed zipper.




















In competition with one another over saggity coolness, some individuals are now riding their pants so low that showing a little boxer gives way to showing all of it. Not cool. As a result of this improperly small Pants Zone, the Shirt Zone is grossly extended to sufficiently cover one's ass. Here's my problem with this. If the primary purpose of pants is to cover your ass and you're wearing your pants far too low to even provide any remote shield that area, and as a result, you have to wear an even longer shirt, then what is the point of even continuing to wear pants? All they do now is make you look semi-handicapped when you walk. And another thing. How on earth do these guys keep the waistline of their pants right around mid-thigh? I'm dumbfounded. Do they wear special suspenders or something? A belt clearly couldn't hold those things up. It's amazing enough that they don't trip over their own friggin jeans...

Anyway, the point that I'm making here is that the integrity of the Shirt Zone and Pants Zone are being violated and their borders must be protected. The Shit/Pants Zone rule is one from which no derogation can be allowed. As soon as House of Pain here realizes that pants are inhibiting his mosey, he's liable to lose them. And then, we've reached the point of no return:

Men in dresses.

Do your part. Pull up your gawd damn pants.

On tats

Every few months or so, Mayo Nurse informs me that she's thinking of getting a tattoo. I'm really not fond of tattoos. In my opinion (and I don't care if you have one or what you think of them), they're tacky and 90% of the time, the bearer comes to regret ever getting them.

Anyway, last weekend was one of those occasions. She's thinking about getting a Celtic cross or something like that. The only way that I have to keep her from going out to a tattoo parlor some night and getting one regardless is to threaten to do something completely idiotic in response. Lately I've been telling her that if she were to get a tattoo, regardless of what design it is, then I'll get myself a tattoo of Elvis Presley's TCB logo on my right arm. She hates that freakin thing as well as anything else representative of my obsession with Elvis Presley.

As of late, though, I'm starting to think that she might be willing to risk it. The prospect of me marking myself as Memphis Mafia for the rest of my life doesn't have the same shock as it used to.

I need suggestions for something better. I've been thinking of threatening Captain Crunch, but she probably wouldn't believe that. I wouldn't either. I need something that I could live with, but she couldn't. Hit me on the comments section.

If Osama can do it...

I ran into this article today when I went to Al Jazeera to see if they were celebrating the London attacks as instructed by the "Secret Organization group al Qaeda Organization in Europe". I’m not a big scholar of Islam or anything, but I’d always been under the impression that you had to hold some clerical qualification in order to issue religious fatwas, which apparently is not the case (though this group of Muslim scholars believes it should be). Having now realized this, I will be issuing fatwas on a regular basis beginning right now.

Fatwa No. 1: No professional baseball team whose home stadium is not in the City of Los Angeles may include the term “Los Angeles” in its name.

Fatwa No. 2: Professor Mitch Gordon must begin wearing a bowtie.

Fatwa No. 3: March 16 shall be Senator Mike Mansfield Day and in his honor, no one may celebrate it.

Fatwa No. 4: Kim Jong Il’s new nickname shall be “Boots.”

Fatwa No. 5: The word is pronounced “noo-CLEAR”. Two syllables. No sticking any “yah” in there.

More to come…

More on the Groene case

I came across this article on the Missoulian web site about St. Regis residents who met and interacted with Joseph Duncan before his arrest.

St. Regis residents realizing they had seen missing children in town
By MICHAEL MOORE of the Missoulian

Joseph Duncan

There are days when it is really difficult to oppose the death penalty. Today is one of those days. The news has been out for awhile now that Shasta Groene and her alleged kidnapper, Joseph Duncan, were found in Idaho. Soon after, the authorities announced that they believe they've found Dylan Groene's remains outside of Missoula. I can only assume that the two are connected and that Duncan told them where to look.

It's difficult to react with anything but rage. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about what he must have done to those kids...or what it must have been like for them. I just hope to God they didn't have to witness what happened to their family.

Anyway, I'm not going to write much about this. It's already being hashed and rehashed on the 24 hour news networks. This evening I stumbled upon this guy's blog, entitled The Fifth Nail. He seems to be confessing to other crimes that he apparently wasn't caught doing and detailing his downward spiral. What a sick rationalization. He talks about how he's never committed pedophilia and specifically never committed the crime he was convicted of back in 1980 but then in the same breath justifies performing sexual acts on children. He acts like such a victim.

My one departing hope is that the police are wrong in their suspicions that they've found Dylan's remains. Maybe it's foolish hope, but I pray that kid's still alive out there...

Observations from 4th of July weekend

I made a few observations this weekend while shopping with Mayo Nurse in Rochester that I thought I might share.

1. The plastic bracelets are out of control.

This was a good idea that got way out of control. At first it was just the whole yellow Lance Armstrong LIVE STRONG bracelets. The money goes to a good cause and shows solidarity with those who suffer from cancer. Fine idea. But just as the WWJD bracelets eventually turned into backpacks, coffee mugs, thongs, etc., the little colored bracelet for a cause has proliferated out of control. As soon as they had the yellow bracelets for testicular cancer, they naturally had to come out with the pink ones for breast cancer. Then there's the white one for third world poverty, the blue one for disappointed Kerry voters, the red one for Bush voters who don't like Kerry voters, the black ones for POWs, rainbow colored ones for gay rights and orange for...promotion of the color orange? I don't even know anymore.

Anyway, the point I'm making is that the bracelet bit has been totally hijacked. It's nothing more than a fashion statement now. My buddy Yaks has been telling me this for months now, but I always shrugged him off as being a pessimist. Not after seeing people like this chick at Footlocker.



















Now this gal really cares. Four frickin' bracelets. I wish I had her heart of gold. And what the hell is the green one for, anyway? I can't even tell what causes these people are supposedly supporting anymore.

2. George Lucas is a pimp and Darth Vader is his whore.




















It's really sad to see one of the greatest villains of all time used to sell everything in the supermarket. I don't want to see his face on my frickin' Poptarts, okay? Slap R2D2's face on there or even Chewbacca but please, some things are sacred. I swear, I saw Vader on a box of Cheese Nips the other day. What's next, George? Is Darth going to be selling Playtex?

And speaking of Poptarts...

3. This is how patriotic I am.


















Some of you might put a flag on your porch for the Fourth of July. Some might wear red, white and blue clothing. I even see people wearing those ridiculous cat-in-the-hat style caps with red lights flashing all over it. None of you can touch my patriotism this year because I am eating the most patriotic breakfast imaginable: red, white and blue Poptarts. That way, I can wake up in the morning and express my defiance of King George even while I'm eating the most important meal of the day.

Justice O'Connor no more...

The most important implications of Sandra Day O’Connor’s impending retirement:

• Stephen Breyer no longer stuck with the nickname “New Guy.”
• New appointment will give bored bipartisan senators something to distinguish themselves from one another.
• Probable fulfillment of C-SPAN’s requirement for coverage of formal congressional hearings on pubic hair, fellatio, or previous porn experience (coming soon) at least once every six years.
• Antonin Scalia already drafting opinion for as-of-yet nonexistent case repealing Roe v. Wade (will just insert “parties” and “facts” later).
• Justices likely to reconsider necessity of keeping a women’s restroom.
• Justice Souter brushing up on his Spanish…you know, just in case.