Hot boudin, cold cush cush. . . .

Any damn questions?

I didn't think so.

Oodles toodle to Google doodle

In Australia, it's tomorrow, which means it's already the 122nd anniversary of Charlie Chaplin's birth, which means Google down under already has a special Google doodle up and running.

This will come to our Google tomorrow, which in the land of kangaroos and koalas will be yesterday's news.

I think.

Whatever day it is, this is the best commemorative Google doodle ever. Ah, these Modern Times. . . .


HAT TIP: Engadget.

Failing but . . . winning!

You've just paid $150 for a couple of seats to a stage show by Charlie Sheen, who's three-quarters out of his mind -- maybe more.

You've shelled out this much cash even though the wittiest thing Sheen has ever said during a weekslong Web assault is . . . "Duh, winning!"

What could go wrong?

Well, nothing for Sheen. After all, he -- as he pointed out in Detroit on Saturday night -- already has your money. Once again, "Duh, winning!"

Then again, maybe he's not as crazy as you think. And maybe you're more crazy than you think -- that is, if you've given Sheen even a dime of your hard-earned money.

In other words, "Duh, MORONS!" Maybe you just need some "tiger blood." That was for sale outside the Fox theater.

AFTER READING this on MSNBC.com, my sympathies are with the Vatican-assassin warlock with Adonis DNA:

Charlie Sheen and his "goddesses" took the stage to thunderous applause Saturday night for the first leg of his "Torpedo of Truth" tour. The 70-minute show hadn't even ended when the first reviews were in, and they were brutal.

The former "Two and a Half Men" star showed that comedic success on the screen doesn't necessarily translate to the stage, and the capacity crowd at the 5,100-seat Fox Theatre rebelled before he left the stage, chanting "refund!" and walking out in droves.

Linda Fugate, 47, of the Detroit suburb of Lincoln Park, walked outside and up the block yelling, "I want my money back!"

She said she paid $150 for two seats.

"I was hoping for something. I didn't think it would be this bad."

Fans who gathered outside the theater before the doors opened Saturday — some who had to fly in for the show — said they were hoping to see the increasingly eccentric actor deliver some of the colorful rants that have made him an Internet star since his ugly falling out with CBS and the producers of "Two and a Half Men."

They got the ranting. It just wasn't funny.

"I expected him to at least entertainment a little bit. It was just a bunch of ranting," said Rodney Gagnon, 34, of Windsor, Ontario.

AMERICANS always have had more money than sense, never more so than today. That being what it is, I expect history to rectify that situation eventually.

Welcome to Trollsville . . . losers.

It's not April Fool's yet. Right?

I thought what I just read a little bit ago was an April Fool's joke. Then again, it isn't April 1 yet.

And I'm pretty sure this article in Variety is dead serious. I'm equally sure them what's got are convinced that them what's not are blithering idiots.

I wish I were more confident that the greedheads in charge of every level of our society were horribly wrong. After all, if they were, it would be terribly difficult to explain how we got to where we are right now in America.

IF YOU DARE, read what Variety says Hollywood has in store for us gullible simpletons. Read it and weep . . . or read it and think "COOL!" Whatever.

Warner Bros., Sony, Universal and 20th Century Fox are the first studios that have agreed to launch Home Premiere as the official brand under which the industry will offer up movies to rent for $30 two months after their theatrical bows for a viewing period of two to three days, depending on the distributor.

DirecTV will exclusively launch Home Premiere nationally to its nearly 20 million customers, while cablers including Comcast will introduce the service in certain cities for an undisclosed period of time some time around the end of this month.

The first films expected to launch include Warner Bros.' actioner "Unknown" and Sony's Adam Sandler comedy "Just Go With It," sources close to the new service say.

The launch plans come months after studios started to float the idea to experiment with higher-priced rentals of pics closer to their theatrical runs as a way to boost their homevid operations with film campaigns still fresh in people's minds.

WB, U and Fox have already succeeded in fending off companies like Netflix and Redbox, forcing them to wait 28 days after a film bows on DVD to offer those titles for rent through their online services and kiosks. Those same studios wouldn't mind lengthening that window even longer and have considered pursuing such talks.

Thank God we're not Charlie Sheen. Right?

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

Here I am, watching Charlie Sheen's psychotic break -- live on tape on Ustream -- and I can't turn away, which would be decent. No, instead, I'm sitting here transfixed as he rants and raves to a sycophantic Baba Booey, the Howard Stern sidekick and executive producer, resplendent in his bed hair, 12 o'clock-the-next-day shadow and snorting a cigarette like it's a line of Colombia's finest.

What I seem to be doing is watching a suicide for my own amusement. I -- we -- may be sicker than the man ranting for the camera about his "tiger blood."

In my defense, feeble as that might be, this is the cultural moment you can't ignore. I'm not entirely sure what that moment is yet, but I know Charlie Sheen is a metaphor for the rest of us -- for our Western society -- in some important manner.

HE'LL END UP blowing his own brains out live for the camera . . . on Ustream. We'll think it's "epic."

Because we're "winners."

Of course, this presupposes that "winner" has been defined down to "Someone who congratulates himself on how clever he is while thinking of ways to leverage a drug-damaged madman's prolonged public suicide into higher brand visibility and a significant profit-making opportunity."

Hey, Charlie! Lookin' good! Dead yet? No?

Duh . . . winning! Let me tweet that. Get the latest update up on my website.

Make sure to make fun of the screwing-a-porn-star thing. That's safe enough. Not that we object to that, necessarily. It's just we know we won't get the chance, so what the hell, you know?

Because we're winners. And Charlie Sheen is a deluded . . . loo-serrrr!


YEAH, Sheen is a loser. But that doesn't make us "winners." We just don't have the fame and the cash to be an "epic" loser.

Unless, of course, you step back and look at us on a societal level. Together, we're "epic." And Charlie Sheen, when you look at it that way, isn't just a train wreck, he's a metaphor. For us.

When you look at all the stats and all the trends and all the crime reports and all the lives of quiet desperation . . . when you look at all the undone husbands and Real Housewives of Exurbia . . . when you look at stressed-out, sexed-out, maxed-out teenagers who decide to check out in alarming numbers . . . when you look at bling and "haters" and paranoiac commentators . . . when you look at all that, Charlie Sheen starts to look a lot more normal.

This is not a good thing.

Carlos Estevez is us. All the immaturity of us, all the lust of us, all the superficiality of us, all the drinking and drugging and bacchanal of us, all the self-importance of us and all the pettiness and madness of us, writ small enough for some voyeur sitting in front of his computer screen to get his little mind around.

Charlie Sheen is a metaphor.

Charlie Sheen is a symptom.

The problem is us.

Duh . . . winning!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

This just in: Charlie Sheen wins again!

Here's what we have so far, posted on MSNBC.com:

"After careful consideration, Warner Bros. Television has terminated Charlie Sheen’s services on "Two and a Half Men" effective immediately," the company announced in a statement.

A source familiar with the decision to terminate Sheen’s contract said that Sheen was informed of the news, “shortly before” the statement was released, at approximately 4:30 p.m. ET. At approximately 4 ET, Sheen tweeted, “#winning.”

"This is very good news," TMZ.com quoted the actor as saying. "They continue to be in breach, like so many whales. It is a big day of gladness at the Sober Valley Lodge because now I can take all of the bazillions, never have to look at whatshisc**k again and I never have to put on those silly shirts for as long as this warlock exists in the terrestrial dimension."

SEE . . . I told you he was winning!

Like, this means they totally will be paying him that $3 million an episode he was demanding to come back. Right? Right?

Oh . . . you mean in the TERRESTRIAL dimension. Well, no, then. In the terrestrial dimension, the warlock isn't doing so well.

Good thing it's not important. If it were, we'd have to define "winning" down to nothing at all.

Simply '70s: Good night, HBO

Life was different in 1977.

For one thing, I had lots of hair (I mean LOTS of hair) and a 29-inch waist. For another, television went to bed at night in 1977, expecting that you did, too.

In 1977, HBO (which folks still knew stood for Home Box Office) wasn't a 24-hour affair. Like many of your local TV stations back then, HBO signed off overnight.

Good night, sleep tight. And don't let the cable box bite.

Obeying the voices in our heads

Video streaming by Ustream
It's a fact that popular culture -- the boob tube, music, movies, celebrity worship -- drive and shape our larger Western culture.

TV gets into our brains -- puts ideas in there -- and our brains begin to think different things.

Movies tell us stories, and we respond to them, and our beliefs shift.

Music goes to our minds and our hearts, and it affects what we think and what we believe.

One way or the other.

Video streaming by Ustream
WHAT COULD go wrong?

What could go wrong with a culture that takes its cues from popular entertainment -- from Hollywood, from the music industry, from the celebrity biz -- when lots of those faces on the screen and voices in your iPod belong to people who are out of their f***ing minds?

Really, what could happen?

All right, let me take this tack . . . what can we learn from this?

I'll start. I'll tell you what I've learned from Charlie Sheen today.

I've learned that this is 42:38 of my life that I can never, ever get back. If you want to waste nearly 43 minutes of yours, that's your own affair. You've been warned.

And the Oscar for Best Presenter goes to . . .

. . . Kirk Douglas.

Let me just say this: I want to live to be 94 years old. And at age 94, I want to be screwing with the minds of a bunch of people half my age.

I also want to be funnier by half than all the people half my age (or a third my age) trying in vain to follow my act.

And I want to be flirting with all the young gals.


AND I'D LIKE to think I had some small role in causing one of them to drop the F-bomb on live, worldwide television.

Just like Kirk Douglas.

Simply '70s: Showing his shortcomings

Hello, everybody, this is your action news reporter with all the news that is news across the nation, on the scene at the 1974 Academy Awards. There seems to have been some disturbance here. Pardon me, sir, did you see what happened?

"Yeah, I did. I's standin' overe there by the paparazzi, and here he come, running across the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, behind David Niven, nekkid as a jay bird. And I hollered over t' Ethel, I said, 'Don't look, Ethel!' But it's too late, she'd already been incensed."

Cousin Eddie makes good, gets sued

"Where's the beef?" Wendy's restaurants once famously asked through its advertising, a swipe at its competitors' burgers.

The same question is now being asked by a California woman regarding Taco Bell's beef products, which she claims contain very little meat. So little, in fact, that she's brought a false-advertising lawsuit against the huge fast-food chain.

The class-action suit, which does not ask for money, objects to Taco Bell calling its products "seasoned ground beef or seasoned beef, when in fact a substantial amount of the filling contains substances other than beef."

It says Taco Bell's ground beef is made of such components as water, isolated oat product, wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, modified corn starch and sodium phosphate, as well as some beef and seasonings.

Just 35 percent of the taco filling was a solid, and just 15 percent overall was protein, said attorney W. Daniel "Dee" Miles III of the Montgomery, Ala., law firm Beasley Allen, which filed the suit.

From the Los Angeles Times

Truth > fiction? Almost always.

One of these clips is not like the others . . .

One of these clips just doesn't belong,


Can you tell which clip is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

Did you guess which clip was not like the others?
Did you guess which clip just doesn't belong?


If you guessed this clip is not like the others,
That's it's not from A Mighty Wind,

If you guessed Bill Daily was taping a pilot,
Lincoln . . . '75 . . . KOLN,

Then you're absolutely . . . right!

With profound apologies to Sesame Street

The longest week

They say Nebraska's football coach, Bo Pelini, has issues.

Perhaps so. Then again, maybe not. But if you're asking me where you go to find the real mental cases in the Big 12 Conference, I'd say you need look no further than league headquarters in Irving, Tejas.

Like the saying goes, everything's bigger in Tejas. That would include the whack jobs.

Who have been given the keys to an entire conference. Holy crap.

I ASSURE YOU, the Omaha World-Herald ain't making this up. If it were, I wouldn't be worrying whether they're going to be directing security efforts toward the wrong people at Saturday's Nebraska-Oklahoma championship tilt at Cowboys Stadium:

Dallas police now say they are not investigating alleged threats against Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe, although they are continuing to provide extra patrols by his family home.

A Dallas Police Department spokesman had said earlier this week that the agency was investigating a report of multiple harassing calls and mail to Beebe’s home. But the spokesman, Sr. Cpl. Kevin Janse, said Thursday that that was a mistake based on a misunderstanding by officers who had been flagged down by Beebe’s wife.

She told the officers that the family had received threats and was concerned, Janse said. Police initially thought the messages had gone to Beebe’s Dallas home, he said. They later determined that they had not gone to the family’s home, but instead were received at Big 12 offices in nearby Irving, Texas, outside Dallas. Irving has its own police department.

Asked for a copy of the report from Beebe’s wife, Janse said there was no written crime report.

Big 12 officials could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Earlier this week, Big 12 spokesman Bob Burda said the matter had been reported to “the authorities,” but declined to name the agency. He said he couldn’t provide copies of the alleged threats because they were under investigation.

CAN NEBRASKA just leave the Big 12 right now? I'm thinking that the farther away NU is from these batsh*t-crazy drama queens, the better.

Seriously, somebody needs to pat down the Big 12 brass before the game. If the Huskers start doing too well, you don't want any conference officials stopping a pick-6 with a 30.06.

Or pulling a Jack Ruby at the trophy presentation. Because, apparently, that's just how Tejans roll.

Just remember, Huskers. It's The Longest Yard out there, and Eddie Albert is being played by Dan Beebe.

Watch your back when you go to retrieve the game ball.

Your Daily '80s: I know that dude!

In 1982, at Ridgemont High School, it wasn't for nothing that surfer dude Jeff Spicoli lived his life inside a cloud of cannabis smoke.

No, what you don't realize is that the dude had "second sight." Like, the dude could, like, see the future, man. He could see us today, bro.

And stoned just seemed like a rational response to that knowledge at the time.

OK, I love this clip, dude. So sue me.

America 2010: A tragedy in four acts

Sorry, Glenn. In this case, "puppetmaster" George Soros was right.

"A 1957 movie -- made by a communist, appropriately" -- Soros' alleged "gift" for Glenn Beck. That is, according to Beck. You see, Soros thinks the Fox News Channel's resident paranoiac is the real-life "Lonesome" Rhodes from A Face in the Crowd, Elia Kazan's 1957 "communist" classic.

According to Beck.

Well, heck. It must be true, the John Birch Society's magazine is picking up Beck's "exposé" of Soros and running with it.


OK, DOES Andy Griffith's character remind you of anyone here? Anyone at all?

Substitute Goldline for Vitajex, Lonesome's sponsor in the film. Anything come to mind now?


THANK GOD that the ultimate faith of "Lonesome" Beck's followers rests in the United States Constitution -- not a TV host. At least if Beck starts to steer them astray, the foundational document of our democratic republic -- and Tea Party America's exhaustive knowledge of it -- will be there to steer them (and us) away from the brink of something really nasty.


OH, S***.

Your Daily '80s: Lotsa space in this mall

Blues Brothers Tour the Maill | Sports | SPIKE.com

The Blues Brothers.

1980.

"They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God."

Meanwhile, 30 years later. . . .

Your Daily '80s: 1987 . . . the apex of Letterman

Sometimes, greatness catches you unawares. Sometimes, you hit your peak, and you have no idea what has happened.

Sometimes, this happens to you, and you have precious little to do with it.

This happened to David Letterman on July 28, 1987. It caught him unawares.

Hell, at the time, most of us in the viewing audience were with Dave. We just figured Crispin Glover was stoned out of his gourd. And weird.

A stoned weirdo.

After watching Andy Kaufman for years by then, we should have recognized greatness.


But now we know the deal.

Your Daily '80s: I speak jive

From 1980, we have these classic moments from Airplane! featuring the late Barbara Billingsley.

What, you think tonight of all nights we'd feature something else? Fo' true?

Chump don't got no sense, look like a jive-ass fool!

'All right, Mr. Jobs, I'm ready for my close-up'

OK, the iPhone 4 may suck as a cell phone, and Steve Jobs may well be a jerk, and the whole friggin' company that is Apple may specialize in arrogance and overpricing, but. . . .

Damn!

What before would have required lots of high-end equipment, crews of technicians and a cadre of special-effects geniuses now can be accomplished by a plucky -- Did I just write "plucky"? -- little crew of young filmmakers.

With an iPhone that costs much, much less than a color television did when I was in college.

Now, whether "cool" actually intersects with "necessary" (especially in light of the team of trade-offs and unintended consequences we hitched our wagon to on the trail to high-tech Nirvana) . . . that's another conversation entirely.

They were too on a mission from God!

Well Jesus, Mary and Joseph! We coulda told you that oh . . . 30 years ago.

That said, I give two thumbs up to the Vatican's proclaiming The Blues Brothers a classic. A Catholic classic.

ABC NEWS brings us the story live from Bob's Country Bunker in Kokomo, Ind.:

This week, the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano devoted no fewer than five articles to "The Blues Brothers," anointing it as a film with a Catholic message.

"The evidence is not lacking in a work where details certainly are not casual," wrote editor Gian Maria Vian, according to a translation from The Tablet newspaper.

He cited examples of a photo of Pope John Paul II on the set, characters like Sister Mary Stigmata, and other religious touches to support his argument. The storyline follows the Blues Brothers as they attempt to raise money for a church-run orphanage where they grew up.

All this in a movie where Jake Blues, played by John Belushi, declares, "Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ! I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT!"

The Blues Brothers joins a lofty list of Vatican-acclaimed films, including "The Ten Commandments," "The Passion of The Christ," and "It's a Wonderful Life."

OF COURSE, some Catholic quarters are horrified, as was the U.S. bishops' film office back in 1980. Moral rigorism always has run strong in the American church, and there will be no plain white toast and whole fried chickens in the lunchroom at the Legion of Christ-owned National Catholic Register:

The movie and its music are “memorable”, concludes Vian, and adds: “According to the facts, [it’s] Catholic.” Elsewhere in the paper, a full page article describes the film as a “masterpiece”, “incredibly shrewd” and “full of ideas.”

All quite interesting – but whether this is really something that should court so much attention in L’Osservatore Romano which many see (incorrectly) as the Vatican’s official mouthpiece, is open to question.

Vian is a friendly, hard-working and well-meaning editor who has done much good for the publication, but his enthusiasm to regularly bring pop culture into the ‘Vatican’s newspaper’ may be all right in Italy, but to an increasing number it appears to trivialize the Vatican and, ultimately, the Church.

While movie and music reviews can rightly be a popular feature of many Catholic newspapers, many, myself included, feel L’Osservatore Romano is different and should instead be devoting its pages to more spiritual and lofty matters related to the faith.

OR, AS MY BOSS at a Catholic radio station once said to me as she objected to a bar of "Jingle Bells" in a recorded holiday ID, "Christmas is not fun." (Unsurprisingly, she belonged to Regnum Christi, the lay arm of the Legion of Christ, an order which has had troubles far surpassing the Vatican newspaper's "nonspiritual" embrace of pop culture.)

Think about that. "Christmas is not fun."

Obviously, for some Catholics, neither are the movies.