And I’m gratified to see that Lileks shares my opinion:
It’s not funny. I’m sorry to Lucy fans, but it’s not. When Lucy and Ethel start to wail, when Reeky gets an idea and decides to foool Loocy, and Fred pitches in – gawd, it’s contrived and strained.
I laughed at it when I was a kid, but I got over it by the time I was eight or so. One can only watch shallow, star-worshipping empty-head ditzes so much. She made me embarrassed for womankind.
Finally. Sartorially eldritch.
Mitch Daniels says that living next door to Illinois is like living next door to the Simpsons.
Virginia Postrel needs some data for a book she’s working on.
Thoughts on John Edwards’ latest escapades:
There’s a saying that when Republicans pick a presidential candidate, they fall in line; when Democrats pick a presidential candidate, they fall in love. The Edwards saga reminds us that while we may think we know the figures we vote for, support, donate to, and volunteer to help elect, we generally don’t really know them. You know your spouse, your family, and your friends. Beyond that, you know the face that someone presents to the world. There’s probably quite a bit of angst, or regret, or pain, or rage, or zaniness or obsessions or any one of a million quirks and traits and secrets behind your neighbor’s pleasant smile. This doesn’t mean that everyone’s a ticking time bomb; it just means we should be cautious before we put anybody up on a pedestal. This particularly applies to the realm of politics, a field that tends to attract the ambitious, the narcissistic, the power hungry, and those who find it hard to resist the notion that they’re “special” and that the rules don’t really apply to them.
Back when OJ Simpson was first accused of murdering his wife and her friend, I recall how many people were shocked. I wasn’t. That is, I didn’t think of OJ Simpson as a thug, but I didn’t think of him as much of anything except a football player and rental-car salesman, so when I heard that he’d done this, I just said, “Meh.” I was also completely unshocked when Edwards was revealed to be a total sleaze bag (not to insult actual bags of sleaze). And in this case, I would have expected it, because he always came across that way to me.
Humanocentric Heinleinism? With a bizarre bonus comparison of Loonies to Palestinians.
…for women:
When it comes to shopping for fashion, women usually dominate, buying clothing for their men as well as themselves. But ladies, I have a gauntlet to throw down: Women have a lot to learn from the way men shop.
I first sensed this when menswear designer Thom Browne told me that he couldn’t use a fabric unless it felt good “to the hand,” because men won’t buy uncomfortable clothing.
Come again? If comfort were the top criterion for selling womenswear, Jimmy Choo would be out of business. Unlike men, women frequently settle for garments that don’t fit well and don’t feel good.
Women shop. Men buy clothes.
I’ve never understood why women let themselves be abused by the fashion industry. If they’d rebel against crap with labels, and letting Parisian poofters tell them what’s fashionable, the labels wouldn’t be able to get away with it.
Anne Francis has died. She’s the first television star that I recall having a pre-teen attraction to. I thought the pre-Cindy-Crawford mole was kind of hot. I also thought her ocelot was cool. A little eerie that she died so soon after fellow Forbidden Planet star Leslie Neilsen.
Here’s one for the youngsters in the audience. I haven’t heard that theme song in decades.
…of Hollywood and the elitist left:
Because those craaaazy red states are the places where you’re likely to find fundies, and the Westboro church is just the natural extrapolation of the red-state fundie ideas, right? RED STATE! OOHGABOOGA! Think of it: horror movies often have guys who A) kidnap victims, B) saw off their heads, and C) film it all for their own enjoyment. Oh, if only there really was a group of religious extremists who did these all things – it would give a movie a certain horrible topicality you just don’t get with unkillable bogeymen. But Smith would never do a movie about Al Qaeda in, say, a city in a blue state. No one would produce it; no one would distribute it. But a movie that links the Westboro church to something inherent in the ideological distinction of a “red state” will get you backslaps from all the right-thinking people. It’s lazy. It’s super-lazy.
A couple points. First, this is just more slander of Christians while ignoring the fact that Fred Phelps and his fellow vile cretinous loony tunes are Democrats. But as with Timothy McVeigh, they never let reality get in the way of an urban myth when they see an opportunity to smear conservatives and Christians.
Second, they’re both Christophobes and Islamaphobes. They’re Christaphobes in the same sense that they (projecting) accuse others of being “Islamaphobes,” that is, they have an irrational fear of Christians (at least as far as their remaining hale and hearty goes, though perhaps their fear that Christians will help undo the state that they worship is genuine). On the other hand, while those they call “Islamaphobes” have a quite reasonable concern about a foreign totalitarian ideology making a foothold in our own culture, the leftist elites have a simple and genuine fear of actual violence from Muslims (though they rarely state it explicitly), were they to ever give them the same treatment that they fearlessly mete out to peace-loving Christians (and conservatives) every day.
Ebooks have sent the sales of “romance” novels soaring.