Saturday, May 19, 2007

Michael Moore's the Bigger Man In More Ways Than One

Moore Pays For His Harshest Critic's Health Insurance:

Filmmaker Michael Moore has come to the rescue of his harshest critic.

For several years now, Jim Kenefick has been railing against the Oscar-winning director on Moorewatch.com. Recently, Kenefick wrote about the difficulty he was having paying his wife's medical bills. Fellow conservatives guided him toward a cheaper health insurer, but Kenefick said he still had trouble making payments.

"Someone e-mailed me and asked if an 'anonymous' benefactor could offer to pay my first year's premiums - $12,000," Kenefick wrote on his site.

He was skeptical when the check arrived. "I opened a whole new account at my bank, waited for it to clear, checked twice with bank personnel to make sure it wasn't a scam, and waited a full 60 days before spending the money. At that time, I started drawing on it and paying the monthly premiums until it was gone."

We can now confirm to Kenefick that his secret benefactor is none other than the dreaded, detestable, loathsome Michael Moore.

Moore didn't contact us. We heard it on our own. Yesterday, his reps said they couldn't reach the director, who is in France getting ready for tomorrow's screening at Cannes of his new movie, "Sicko."

One friend of Moore's did say, "We sure are happy Jim's wife received the care she needed."

Kenefick admitted the $12,000 "was like manna from heaven at that time. ... My business was almost dead, my wife was very, very ill, and I was racking up a few little health problems of my own. That money made it possible for us to begin to turn our lives around."

Still, he doesn't sound especially grateful.

Having suspected Moore might be his secret patron, he contends that his bete noir made the gift just to publicize "Sicko," which takes aim at America's health-care system and, we've heard, touches upon Moore's covert generosity.

"I knew he was using me," said Kenefick. "Moore is going to try to make me into one of his little puppets."

Kenefick wants it known that "I'm not an idiot. I know when to say yes to something, even if the string attached is obvious. What kind of moron turns down a free 12 grand?"

Kenefick's reaction on his blog?

Apparently I’m going to be the focus of every press idiot that still fawns over Mikey’s bullshit for the next few days. Yeah, better to focus on me than him, I suppose, that way you can keep your blinders on about why he does things...

Oh my. “Doesn’t sound especially grateful?” A few years ago, Moore threatened to sue me. Add to that the fact that $12,000 is equal to his ding-dong budget for the week. Or what it costs to make one of those suits for award shows. Add to this growing list the fact that it was never altruism and every human being alive who knows anything about Moore knows that. He paid $12,000 so he could manufacture a “gotcha” moment in his film. Sounds pretty cheap to me.

What am I supposed to be grateful for? The chance to look like an ass? The chance to be in his movie? For him throwing me pocket change in order to try to humiliate me later? That’s why he did it. Period.


Jesus, what a dick.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Oh, Dear God, Please No

IGN: Sarah Connor Chronicles Debuting This Fall: May 14, 2007 - Sarah and John Connor's attempt to escape the clutches of The Terminator will continue. Variety is reporting that the FOX network has picked up the pilot The Sarah Connor Chronicles and will be debuting the series this fall. Taking place after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Sarah Connor will star Lena Headey (300) in the title role, with Thomas Dekker (best known as Zach on Heroes) as John. Also in the cast is Summer Glau (Firefly) as a Terminator, though it's not known if she is a good or evil character.

Does anybody think this is going to be anything but a major league clusterfuck?

I mean, assuming for the moment that this grotesque miscasting doesn't immediately doom the show to monstrous suckitude; assuming they can get past the retconning that shoehorns yet another Terminator in between movies 2 and 3 (one that John has no memory of and never mentions in T3); assuming for the moment that there actually is a way for a long-form TV series to to maintain the feeling of tension and the nightmare oh-my-god-it's-still-coming-after-me dread that made the Terminator films great; assuming, in short, that this whole project manages not to stink like a dead woodchuck....is there anyone who really believes that the same network execs who strangled Firefly in its crib won't figure out a way to screw it up?

Days like this I really hate television.

If You Were Wondering What to Get Me For Father's Day


The Blood Puddle Pillow.

I Suppose It Was Inevitable

World of Warcraft Gets Its First Hooker

And she has her own costume!

Hello I need 5000 world of gold for my epic flying mount. In return you can mount me.

You have to have an account on the laughing skull server and I want the 5000 gold BEFORE we do anything, we can make the trade at your place since I can't host. EDIT: Because I am having a lot of dumb guys message me who clearly don't have the gold make SURE to send: a picture of yourself and a screenshot of your character with the 5000g, I will be checking armory profiles, thanks.

I play a level 70 night elf druid and would prefer someone who was into roleplaying (I have a costume!) but honestly anyone will do, as long as you have the gold. I would also be ok with a woman too, as long as you have the gold! Also not adverse to the idea of groups\anal.

Please send a pic and be real and drug\disease free with 5000 gold on the laughing skull server.


For 5,000 gold she better have more than a costume. In fact she better make me some damn breakfast.

Note: I do not play World of Warcraft. I'm afraid if I start, no one will ever see or hear from me again.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Publisher's Weekly Reviews SAFE AND SOUND


NICE!!!!

The money quote: "Crisp dialogue and the author's deft use of local color support a narrative driven as effectively by characters as by events."

Jerry Falwell Has Died.

Okay, I want to make it very clear that I am not happy about Jerry Falwell's death, and that this is not any kind of celebration.

But in the next few days, as the tide of bullshit mounts about what a great Spiritual Leader Jerry Falwell was and how he touched the loves of so many people, I want you to remember this:

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

-Jerry Falwell, September 14, 2001

“I listen to feminists and all these radical gals - most of them are failures. They've blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men - that's their problem.”

“The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews.”

“If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being.”

"We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism ... we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying our nation today ... our battle is with Satan himself."

Falwell and his ilk, with constant yammering about "culture war," took differences of opinion and turned them into casus belli. They pitted us against each other for their own political gain. Jerry Falwell was one of the leaders of a group that has done more to divide and weaken this country than Al Quaeda could ever dream of. Don't ever forget it.


I'm not happy for anyone's death, but I shed no tears.

Monday, May 14, 2007

Your Humble Narrator Speaks Out, With Pictures

Stephen Allan over at Noir Writer interviews yours truly for the "Sunday Interview" section which runs, for obscure technical reasons, on Monday. Check it out.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

One for Legendary Bluesman David Terrenoire

CLARKSDALE, MS–Ida Mae Dobbs, longtime woman of Willie "Skipbone" Jackson, called a press conference Tuesday to respond to charges levied against her by the legendary Delta blues singer.

"Despite what Mr. Jackson would have you believe, I am not an evil-hearted woman who will not let him be," Dobbs told reporters. "I repeat: I am not an evil-hearted woman who will not let him be. To the contrary, my lovin' is so sweet, it tastes just like the apple off the tree."

***

Dobbs, a short-dress, big-legged woman from Coahoma County, said it is not she but Jackson who should be forced to defend himself. According to Dobbs, Jackson frequently has devilment on his mind, staying up until all hours of the night rolling dice and drinking smokestack lightning.

"Six nights out of seven, he goes off and gets his swerve on while I sit at home by myself. Then he comes knocking on my door at 4 a.m., expecting me to rock him until his back no longer has any bone," Dobbs said. "Is that any way for a man to treat his woman? I don't want to, but if he keeps doing me wrong like this, I am going to take my lovin' and give it to another man."

Added Dobbs: "Skipbone Jackson is going to be the death of me."

Happy Now? Well, No.

Latest Newspaper Column:

The political cartoonist who goes by the pen name of Tom Tomorrow did a strip a few months back that I've been thinking about a lot lately.

Entitled "America: A Brief Parable," the strip shows two people in a convertible tooling along the road.

"Watch out," the passenger says in alarm, "you're headed for that cliff!"

"There's no cliff," the driver says.

"It's right ahead of us!" the passenger shouts. "Stop the car!"

"Relax," the driver insists, "I have a map. There's no cliff."

As the car careens off the cliff and the passenger screams in terror, the driver huffs, "This is your fault. You wanted us to fail."

Recently we marked the four-year anniversary of George Dubya Bush's standing on the flight deck of the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, under a banner that said "Mission Accomplished," and telling us: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

Well, maybe that was true for major combat, Mr. President, but those minor combat operations are bleeding us dry. Since Dubya announced that "In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," we've gone from 139 American troops killed to more than 3,300 (I won't put an exact figure in because between the time this column is written and the time it runs, the number will almost certainly increase).

The number of wounded went from 542 at the time of Bush's speech to more than 24,000. And there's no end in sight, since "The Decider" is willing to cut off funding for the troops in the field because the funding bill contained a timetable for getting out of the Iraq mess.

This, despite the fact that a recent CNN poll shows that 57 percent of the American people favor a bill setting a timetable. Sixty-one percent would favor a bill that set benchmarks for the Iraqi government to meet to maintain American support, but Dubya has vowed to veto that one, too. And so we drag on, week after week, while the Iraqis we've freed seem intent on using that freedom to slaughter one another, and us too while they're at it.

So you'd think that people who called people like me "traitors" and "terrorist supporters" for daring to question this war might think of saying to us, "Hey, maybe you were right." Well, if you think that, you obviously don't know squat about the American Right.

The current right-wing talking point, as espoused by people like vicious drunkard Christopher Hitchens, psychopathic bully and sexual harasser Bill O'Reilly, and admitted prescription drug addict Rush Limbaugh, is that the vaguely defined "left" is happy about the chaos in Iraq because they "want us to lose."

For the record, no. I'm not happy. And you can't say I didn't give George Dubya a chance. Back in 2002, I wrote: "I'm not one of those people who reflexively says 'no' to any American military action. I'm willing to get behind a strike on Iraq, but first I'd like some answers" to questions like "Suppose we march on Baghdad and oust Hussein. Then comes the Mother of All Questions: What do we do then?"

Well, as it turns out, not only did the president and his men not have any real clear idea about what we do then, they didn't have much patience for anyone else who asked the question, even their own generals.

In an interview by the Hampton Roads Daily Press with retiring Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, one of the people in charge of planning the war, he relates how he and his fellow officers kept trying to write plans for what they called "Phase 4," the post-invasion occupation of Iraq.

Even if we weren't planning to stay, Scheid argued, there should at least be a plan. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld threatened to fire the next person who brought up the subject. There wouldn't be public support, he said, for a long war. Well, he was right about that, at least.

So am I happy that my misgivings actually came to pass? Let me answer that question with another question, in the form of a hypothetical.

You have a dear friend who likes his whiskey and he likes to drive fast. You warn him over and over that he's headed for trouble, bad trouble, if he keeps on, but he ignores you. Finally, the inevitable happens, and you're standing next to his bed, tears running down your face as you see his broken body. One of his drinking buddies staggers up to you and sneers into your face "I guess you're happy now, huh?" What do you do?

I suspect you'd punch him right in the mouth.

So please don't ever ask me if I'm happy to have been right about Iraq. Not if you like your teeth where they are.