James Lipton recites K-Fed's PopoZao

Even though this post is filed under "music," PopoZao, Kevin Federline's new soon to be hit single (because shit's a hit if its played enough these days) should not be classified as music. Chris posted this MTV clip of K-Fed grooving to his own song at a sound board and while many in the blogosphere are full of schadenfreude about it, what the hell would you look like grooving to your own song at a sound board? I probably would look just as silly. A better thing to watch would be James Lipton reciting the words to this inane song on Conan.

In other related news, I love the K-Fed moniker because its the first non-hispanic usage of the "first initial first name, first syllable last name" type nickname I've seen in the entertainment world. K-Mart was the first in the sports world (A-Rod, I-Rod, K-Rod and F-Rod all came before him) and even though I only know of J-Lo in the show biz world, (P. Diddy does not count and not because he has a period instead of a dash, rather because Diddy is not short for Combs) K-Fed does break new ground. I'm mulling the switch to J-Lip as we speak.

Comments are Shut Down Until Further Notice

The spam barrage continues. I hope that by taking down the comments feature for a few days, the spambots will leave my little blog alone and I'll be able to add comments back to my site. In the mean time, I am experimenting with a couple of different comment verification systems. I know that I've received less than 200 comments since my blog has been up but its not the amount, its the idea that someone can publically respond to what I wrote. Now, I've had to change this because of fucking spammers. I hope every last comment spammer dies a gruesome death.

Under Spam Attack

My site is currently under a crazy comment spam attack. I have received over 1000 spam comments in the last 24 hours and if this continues, I am going to have to disable the comment feature which would fucking blow. All comment spammers should die a horrible death. As a short haired blond crazy woman named Susan Powter once said, "Stop the insanity!"

State of the Onion

This year both Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address fall on the same day. As Air America Radio pointed out, "It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a groundhog."

Via Moeller

Nikolay Valuev, aka the Beast from the East, aka the Russian Giant

Nikolay Valuev is 7 feet tall and weighs 323 pounds. He's also boxing's tallest and heaviest champion (he controversially won the WBA heavyweight championship back in December, 2005) and punningly the newest next big thing to hit the boxing world.

Feel free to start the Andre the Giant comparisons now. While Nikolay reads Tolstoy and writes poetry to his wife, there is a big brew-ha-ha in Russia now as he supposed beat the shit out of a security guards that was hassling his wife about where she parked her car. You tell me - is he more Princess Bride Andre or WWF Andre? Regardless, he's 43-0 and may be fighting in AC this year.

"Kind of Muddled?" Try Indecipherable!

This actual verbatim exchange between a citizen and our President comes from an appearance by Bush in Tampa on February 4, 2005 as he tried to save his Social Security Privitization plan:

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: 'I don't really understand. How is it the new plan going to fix the problem?'

PRESIDENT BUSH:

Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the - - like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, supposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.'

If you don't believe that the leader of the free world could really say such gibberish, here is the support. Chalk up another point to the pre-senile dementia diagnosis.

Via Monty

My NXT Robot

Lego is currently developing an updated robot kit for their Mindstorms division called NXT and I am so pscyhed to get one. I have never built a robot before, though when I was a child I dreamt of doing so and even figured out all the pieces I needed to ad-hoc acquire. While I got some of the parts, I never got the tank tread that was needed for mobility and that in a sense stopped the development in its tracks. Now, many many years later, after reading the recent Wired aritcle about this project and seeing the demo on the Lego site, I for some reason have a burning desire to build my own robot. It comes out in the fall and I for one cannot wait until the leaves start a'fallin.

The really cool thing about the development process is how Lego has tapped the hardcore Mindstorms programming community for advice, testing and feedback which in turn is actually being incorporated into the product design. The orginal robot kit from 2000 was not that great but a lot of talented and smart people took those limited bits to amazing heights - sort of how we put a man on the moon with less computing power than what is in a regular cell phone. Now those same people are now working with Lego to ensure that the NXT kit is friggin fantastic. This is not an open source product and project though - Lego is keeping all proprietary data and knowledge and Lego is the one making the money here but that to me, and to the developers helping, is okay. Its better to have someone to turn to do, to own the factories, to handle packaging and shipping, etc. Sort of how RedHat sells Linux in a way. Everyone is just happy that the end product will be the best that it can be because the global knowledgebase has been tapped in order to make it so. I have signed up to be a Lego Mindstorms NXT Pioneer and will find out some time in February whether or not I'm picked to write article, post entries and build robots as a beta tester. I am sure I have no chance, there are only 100 Pioneers, but as NY Lotto used to say, "Hey, you never know."

Mr. Lawn Guyland Sets the Record

Continuing on my recent kick of posting about LI, Billy Joel's 11th MSG show breaks the record for most shows at MSG sold out on a single tour. The previous record, 10, was held by both Bruce Springsteen and the Grateful Dead. As a music fan and knowing the history of the Garden, I'm suitablely impressed. Lawn Guyland's home of rock n roll, WBAB, has some good info about the shows, the tour and other news about the Piano Man.

Lawn Guyland History

Newsday printed a cover that read "Welcome to Lawn Guyland" at the height of the Amy Fisher affair and I still am in love with that pronunciation - it helps me get peole to say Long Island the "correct" way. The Freeport Motel/Boatel, where she and Joey had a few of their illicit trysts, is around the corner from my grandparents' house so whenever I visit them, I think of that magical time in LI history. It turns out the infamous trio have agreed to appear in TV reunion. I guess that since there were 3 different TV movies on the same night about this story, I'm not surprised that their reunion is televised - anything for a buck, eh?

After the jump, read the full text of a NY Times article about those movies.

Via Neu

Amy Fisher Story a Surprise Smash In 3 TV Movies

By BILL CARTER (NYT) 922 words
Published: January 5, 1993

Surpassing the expectations of network officials, each of the three made-for-television movies based on the Amy Fisher case and broadcast in the last week was a stunning success, and two of the three are likely to emerge as the most popular television movies of the season.

The NBC movie, which was broadcast on Dec. 28, had a 19.1 rating and was the highest-rated television movie of the season so far. The ABC movie, broadcast Sunday night, had a 19.4 in the overnight ratings and may top the NBC version's when final figures are released today. The CBS movie, shown on Sunday at the same time as ABC's, had a 15.8 overnight rating and is likely to be about the seventh-highest-rated movie of the season. (Each national ratings point represents 931,000 homes; overnight ratings are only from the top 28 cities, and each point represents 462,634 homes).

The average rating for a network show is about 12.

Executives from each network acknowledged yesterday that they were shocked by the strong showing for all three Amy Fisher movies, each of which told the story of how she shot the wife of the man she said was her lover. "I was stunned," said Ruth Slawson, the senior vice president of movies for NBC. "I don't know anyone in the business who wasn't stunned."

Never before had two television movies on the same subject competed head to head, and no subject had ever been covered in three separate television movies. "Like everyone else, I expected the two movies to split the audience Sunday night," Ms. Slawson said. "I wasn't sure how they would do after ours had been on, but I guess you could say Amy has become a cottage industry." And There's More

Indeed, Ms. Fisher has been fodder for ratings-hungry programs all over television. (Last night, the tabloid syndicated magazine show "Hard Copy" ran a few moments from what it labeled an X-rated home video recorded by Ms. Fisher and a boyfriend before the shooting took place.) The CBS movie, called "Casualties of Love: The 'Long Island Lolita' Story" and starring Alyssa Milano, will be shown twice more this month on the USA cable channel. It will be the first time a network television movie has ever resurfaced that quickly on cable.

NBC has already been taking advantage of Ms. Fisher's notoriety. The network's weekly news magazine program "Dateline NBC" broadcast an interview with Ms. Fisher each of the past two weeks and scored the highest ratings in that program's history. The first interview pushed "Dateline" to seventh place in the weekly ratings. It usually finishes about 45th.

"All of us perpetuated this," Ms. Slawson said. "It became a media phenomenon."

It has become common for network movie departments to seek to win the rights to the same well-publicized murder cases, especially if they involve some aspect of lurid sex. On several occasions, two networks have bought the same story and competed to get their version on first.

But this was the first case that brought all three networks into the action. NBC purchased Ms. Fisher's side of the story for an undisclosed sum. CBS bought the rights to the story as told by Mary Jo Buttafuoco, the victim, as well as by her husband, Joey. Thus Mr. Buttafuoco was portrayed as Ms. Fisher's adulterous lover in the NBC movie -- "Amy Fisher: My Story," starring Noelle Parker -- and as an innocent victim of her obsession in the CBS version. Many Viewpoints

The ABC version, called "The Amy Fisher Story" and starring Drew Barrymore, used multiple points of view without defining who was guilty and who wasn't. Yet the ABC version may be the highest rated of all: a result, several television executives said, of the decision to cast a well-known actress, Drew Barrymore, in the role of Amy.

"ABC's also had the most sex," said one senior television executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Nonetheless, executives could not easily explain why this story had such widespread appeal. Ms. Slawson said, "I don't believe there was anything so unique or gripping to this story to make it that special," though she did say that Amy's age -- 18 -- seemed to be a factor in luring viewers. "Thematically, this is just another 'fatal attraction' story," Ms. Slawson added.

It carried so much more interest, she said, because of the attention that surrounded the case from the first moment. "It helped that this was a New York story. It was constantly in the New York tabloids and those stories get picked up by the national tabloid television magazine stories." Timing Is Cited

The timing between the events and the movie was also unusually short because Ms. Fisher reached a plea bargain under which she went to prison for 5 to 15 years. "We didn't have to wait for a long-drawn-out trial," Ms. Slawson said. "It was a very fresh story. You also had the very fact that three networks were doing the same story. That was another way for people to keep talking about it."

Ms. Slawson said she had serious reservations about the process through which Amy Fisher's story became the hottest thing on American television. "I think it's a really sad commentary about what people are interested in," she said.

"It's crazy," she added. "It's self-perpetuating. We all say we don't want to keep on doing these true-crime movies but then these numbers come in and what choice do we have? Obviously the audience wanted to watch it, for whatever reason. I'm happy with the success of our own movie. But overall I'm not happy about the state of movies on television."

Photos: The networks' three Amy Fishers were, from the top, Noelle Parker (Shane Harvey/NBC), NBC, Alyssa Milano, CBS (CBS), and Drew Barrymore, ABC. (ABC)

Rock Out to "Canon in D Minor"

The internet has an entire universe of amateur video clips. They usually fall into the categories of Good, Bad and Ugly. Then again, every once in a while something is Great, like this electric guitar version of Canon in D minor. It's a nice little wake yo ass up pill on a rainy Monday afternoon.

Via Chris

Miyazaki Thursdays on TCM

All this month on Turner Classic Movies, Thursday nights have been devouted to Hayao Miyazaki, a man who has been hailed as the "Japanese Walt Disney." The first Thursday of the month they aired Princess Mononoke (which I've seen many, many times and love) and Spirited Away (which I am in the process of watching). I missed the 2 films from last Thursday, 1 of which "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind" is my friend Gil's favorite by Miyazaki, because I didn't know it was "Miyazaki Month" until I started to watch Spirited Away last night. I quicked grabbed my remote and have scheduled My Neighborhood Totoro and Porco Rosso for taping this Thursday. I cannot wait to watch these well. The following Thursday they are showing 2 movies, Only Yesterday and Pom Poko, he produced that were directed by Isao Takahata. I'll tape and watch those as well.

I've been a huge Miyazaki fan ever since I saw Princess Mononoke but have ben lazy in renting and watching his other films. This past summer, the MoMA held a Miyazaki exhibition and all of his films were screened over a 4 day period. I was super psyched to go but unfortunately, the exhibition happened to exactly coincide with the end of my parents' 30 or so year marriage. My sister was staying with me while my family imploded and needless to say, neither of us made it to the museum. Its funny; on top of all the other reasons I was upset that weekend, I was upset that I missed out on seeing all these flicks. Now, when its cold and gross and I don't want to leave my apartment, I have some fantastic movies just sitting around waiting to be watched. I can't wait!

Go Before They Are Gone

I do not make a habit of reading USA Today. In fact, I never read it unless I'm on vacation and have no other option. That being said, I could not resist clicking on a banner for USAToday.com that was advertising the top Travel stories of this past week. The story that really called out to me was "Vanishing Treasures: 5 places to see before they are gone". According to this paper, here are the top 5 cultural treasures that are in danger of going bye-bye:

1. The snows of Kilimanjaro
2. Polar bears on Hudson Bay
3. Ancient Egyptian archaeological sites
4. Gullah/Geechee culture
5. Monarch butterflies' annual migration

I'll have to check my calendar but odds are I'm not seeing any of these in '06. Hopefully they will still be around in '07...

Poke versus Tomoe

I have been a big fan of Poke, an incredible sushi restaurant by me, for some time now. Since I moved nearby last April, I’ve eaten there on average 2 – 3 times a month. Its BYOB policy is fantastic for oenophiles and budget conscious connoisseurs alike. When the topic of sushi restaurants pops up in conversation, I boast about my neighborhood haunt, going as far to say that it’s the uptown Tomoe. Yes, the legendary Tomoe, where my good friend Mike ordered so much food one time, they refused to serve him, saying that he couldn’t possibly eat all of that fish. We convinced the staff that he’s a whale when it comes to sushi and that no fish would go to waste. Sure enough, he ate everything on his plate (which was more than what the other 3 people ate combined). The staff was so impressed that they brought us a bottle of sake on the house to honor this incredible feat. It was funny then and its still funny now.

The calling card for both of these establishments is a stark décor coupled with superb and sublime sushi. Poke is completely devoid of any décor – it is a plain white empty box with literally nothing on the walls. You feel like you are in somebody’s studio apartment which has been gutted and is in the process of being rebuilt. Tomoe has a bit of décor compared to Poke but all it really has are posters tacked onto the wall. In Zagats, Poke gets a 26 for food and a 4 for décor; a difference of 22 and the only difference I know of that is greater than twenty in the entire guide. Tomoe has less of a spread, though only slightly, as it gets a 27 for food and an 8 for décor; a difference of 19. I guess a poster or two goes a long way.

Mike has been dreaming about his epic meal at Tomoe for years now so I recently took him with me to Poke so that he could compare the two. Unfortunately, my ego took a slight hit as he was not head over heals for the joint. While he loved the rolls, which he declared to be better than those served at Tomoe, he said that the sushi was just okay. He didn’t think the toro was anything special and overall he thought that the pieces were on the small to average size (Tomoe is known for its oversized pieces of sushi). The more I thought about it, the more that I thought that he may be right.

My plan is to, for the first time in over a year, head back to Thompson Street to hit up Tomoe and see what that extra point for food gets ya. Hopefully the line won’t be too long (i.e. over a half an hour) and hopefully I’ll be bringing Mike with me. While I’ll be brown bagging a Sapporo while I wait on the street, as I cannot bring my own alcohol, I’m hoping Mike’s eating prowess once again nets us some free booze.

In case you are curious, here are the reviews from Zagats:

Poke: “Exceptional sushi” sliced by a “friendly chef” at “bargain” rates is slightly muted by the “grim”, “cramped” setup at this East Side Japanese BYO – but regulars say “if you drink enough sake, you’ll think it’s Nobu.”

Tomoe: “Neither rain nor sleet nor snow” deter diehards from this Village Japanese and its “affordable”, “monster-size” sushi that “melts in your mouth like buttah”; defying the “nonexistent decor” and “postage stamp”–dimensions, “ouch”-inducing lines wrap “around the block” every single day.

Quotes of the Day

"First, you are drunk. Second, this is not a waltz; it is the Peruvian national anthem. And third, I am not a woman; I am the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima." - response given to George Brown, an English Labor foreign secretary in the 1960's, after he stumblingly(i.e. drunkenly) invited a guest in flowing purple robes at a reception in Peru to dance.

''It's so interesting to me that people talk about late-night comedy being cynical. 'What's more cynical than forming an ideological news network like Fox and calling it 'fair and balanced'? What we do, I almost think, is adorable in its idealism. It's quaint.'' - John Stewart, on his program "The Daily Show."

The GeigerPod

This GeigerPod, an iPod inside of a Geiger counter, is simply fantastic. I love when people hack one device and make another one out of it, like when people turned their XBox's into Linux machines or when Chris made a rechargable iPod battery out of an Altoids tin. Check out the entire Flikr set of the retrofitted counter. I say well done JavaMoose!

Via Slashdot

My Framed LIRR Monthly Ticket

"I'm never leaving the city again; I'm terrified of leaving the city." - Anna Hillen, from a recent NY Times article about the suburbs.

Back in March, 2000, after living at home for 9 months post graduation, I moved into my first NYC apartment. It was a 2 bedroom converted to 3, my room was formerly part of the living room and my roomates were one of best college friends and another guy who happened to not only be a co-worker of my friend but a great friend of one of my best high school friends. In a small world moment, we figured out that we had actually all crashed in the same hotel room in New Orleans during Mardi Gras in 1999. It was exciting and exhilerating to be once again on my own and it was like being a freshman in college all over again, except that I had the riches of all of New York to explore.

A few weeks prior to this momentous event, when my family took me out for a good-bye dinner I raised my glass and gave this toast, "To, unless I really screw up, never having to live at home ever again."

There were many reasons as to why I hated living at home. A grand sense of emasculation was one. I had so much freedom at college and I basically lost it all when I lived at home. My parents wanted to know where I was going, what I was doing, who I was with and when I would be home. They wanted to know if they should prepare dinner for me and a million of other little things that may seem nice and loving when you're on the outside looking in. When you are on the inside, its annoying, grating and very quickly it made college feel like it was merely a dream.

Another reason was that I hated the commute with a passion. Mine was about 1.5 hrs one way when you took into account the drive to the train station, the trip in and the walk to work. My father drove me to the station each day (there was a severe lack of parking if you got there after 7:00 AM) which added to my fun as I needed to make arrangements to and from the station each and every day. I hated the way the commute turned people into automatons and I still have a vivid memory of one man who would sit in the same seat each day and would robotically wake up the second the train arrived in Penn Station, stand, grab his briefcase and walk off the train. I found it really scary yet soon enough, I was carrying a travel pillow in my messenger bag because the train motion lulled me to sleep like I was a mere baby.

I hated the way a train schedule dictated my entire life. I hated how I almost missed the train one morning and got into a fight with the trucker driver that caused my delay. He tried and failed repeatedly to properly back his rig up to a loading dock and wound up blocking the street for minutes on end. I was forced to get out of my dad's car to run about 5 city blocks in order to make it work on time. Of course I had to yell at the guy too - "Don't you know the train schedules asshole?! There's only 1 every half an hour and you choose now to fuck this up! Don't you realize that people need to get to work?!" Sure enough, he got out, hopped down and wound up grabbing my coat and throwing me against a fence. He was about to hit me too until I taunted him with, "Go ahead and hit me, please hit me. My father is in that car back there. He's a lawyer. I'll own you." Definitely one of my prouder moments. Anyway, he put me down, my father yelled at both of us and I ran and just caught the train. Suburbia was making me crack and I needed out.

My hatred for my commute was such that I vowed that when I was finally able to move into the big city, I would frame my monthly LIRR pass as a reminder of what I left behind. A week or so after the trucker incident, I called up one of my friends (my future roommate) and said, "Dude, It doesn't have to happen immediately but I cannot live at home any longer with no hope. I need to know if you want to look for apartments together. Again doesn't need to be now. Frankly, I'm not sure if I have the money yet. However, I can't afford a studio so I need a roommate and wanted to know if you wanted to look together." His response was miraculously, "Actually, I was just talking to a co-worker today who you sort of know about getting a triple. Would you want to be the third guy?" "Would I? YES!" The second apartment we saw we took and the rest is, as they say, is history.

So, I now have a slightly tattered February, 2000 light green Long Island Rail Road montly pass sitting on the shelf above my bed. I framed it when I moved into the city in 3/00 and its been with me ever since. I used to think that the house, the deck, the yard, the space, the neighborhood, the car and all the other things the 'burbs bring with it was worth it if you had a family. I used to say, "This is great for the future. But for now, this sucks." Now I'm not so sure about the future. I don't think I ever want to leave the city. Each time I go out to the 'burbs I have the same feeling: I love to visit but can't wait to leave. Who needs a house that constantly needs something redone or repaired done when I can live in a hotel? I can't fathom living outside of an urban environment again, thus my love for that Times article.

My favorite phrase in the entire article was "Adding insult to tedium," which was used to explain how a mostly nonpedestrian lifestyle caused 15 lbs of weight gain for one commuter. Here are some other good quotes from the article:

"It's like death out there. I can't wait 15 minutes in a bagel store to get two bagels. I can't have people looking at me like I'm crazy when I walk in and put a quarter on the table to get my paper and walk out. I go home and there's, like, people doing their lawn every five minutes. They seem like normal people but they spend, like, hours working on their lawn." - Ronn Torossian, President and CEO of 5W Public Relations

"The suburbs have some way of sucking the city out of you" - Brian Lover, VP at the Corcoran Group

"When we come home and walk from the train to our apartment, there's no one on the street between 7 and 10 p.m. It's just that feeling of being alone. You walk the dog and there's no one there." - Sara Mendelsohn

"I spent many depressing nights at the Hoboken station. If you go out for a drink with friends, you're always watching the clock" - Andrew McCaul, photographer

Racist Suggestions

"Employee error" contributed to a cross-selling effort on the Wal-Mart Web site that suggested that buyers of "Planet of the Apes" DVD boxed sets would also enjoy four African-American-themed films, including biographies of Dorothy Dandridge, Tina Turner, Jack Johnson and Martin Luther King, the company said Friday.

Via Todd

John Stewart To Host 2006 Oscars

It is a fantastic idea to have John Stewart host the Academy Awards. He has a sharp wit, has a great team of writers, is fast on feet and easily skewers those in power. Who better to spend 5 hours of television with? To me, the Awards are a cross between the entertainment super bowl and a car accident: I cannot not watch. I even bet on who will win each category. For anyone on the fence about this decision, just tune into the Daily Show. Read the full article here.

Via Jessie and Monty

Does Dubya Have Pre-senile Dementia?

I have not listened to a George Bush speech, even the State of the Union address, for a long time now for 2 reasons. The first is that he uses Orwellian double speak (passing legislation called the "Clear Skies Initiative" that allows for more pollution) which really makes me distrust most of what he says. This is especially true after how he promised billions to NYC after 9/11 which never showed up, after he presented info about Iraq which was flat out wrong - my list is really long so I'll just stop there. The second is that he more times than not sounds like a total idiot. The fact that someone sounding so stupid could have gotten so far upsets me to no end. I take great pride is sounding like I know what I'm talking about, even when I don't have a clue. It turns out that there may be a scientific explanation to my second reason.

Dr. Joseph M. Price wrote in a letter to the editor printed in the October 2004 issue of The Atlantic that "slowly developing cognitive deficits as demonstrated so clearly by the President can represent only one diagnosis and that is pre-senile dementia." One of the symptoms is "a striking decline in his sentence-by-sentence speaking skills." His letter was in response to James Fallows "When George Meets John" article in the July/August 2004

This Bush Pre-senile Dementia video intercuts footage from 10 years ago with recent footage. As the site that hosts the video says, you'll see the difference is dramatic, disturbing and obvious.

Yes, pre-senile dementia looks like penis dementia if read really fast. Sort of like how Scot Run, PA always looks like Scrotum, PA when you whiz by the I-80 highway sign going 75 mph. That doesn't change the fact that it exists and tha our President probably suffers from it. Its nice to know that once Bush sounded smart but now he's getting closer to Mohammed Ali land. I would much rather have an intelligent chap, even someone I disagree with, representing me than Dubya, King of the Malaprops.

Via Neu

Catholic Church on Freedom of Speech: TV Shows That Make Fun Of Our Religious Sentiments Shouldn't Have It, But We Still Need It So We Can Continue To Tell Non-Christian Women What To Do With Their Bodies

After the jump, read about how it looks as if Viacom, after dealing with lots of pressure from various Catholic groups, has banned Comedy Central from showing a repeat of a South Park episode. Yep. Censored like they were opposing the Tzar.

Thanks go Monty for the title - I think it's my longest ever. It makes me think of Fiona Apple's 2nd album title. Good title, bad album. However, her 3rd album rocks.

"South Park" Parked by Complaints

By Sarah Hall Tue Jan 3,12:06 PM ET for E! Online

Did Comedy Central grant the Catholic League its Christmas wish?

Following the Dec. 7 season finale of South Park, titled "Bloody Mary," the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights slammed the network for its irreverent portrayal of church icons and sought to block the episode from being rebroadcast.

It appears the group may have met with success. A repeat of the finale was scheduled to air Wednesday night, but was pulled from the Comedy Central lineup without explanation.

In the episode, a statue of the Virgin Mary is believed to be bleeding from its rear end, inspiring faithful parishioners to flock from miles around to be healed by the miraculous blood.

Eventually, Pope Benedict XVI is called in to investigate, whereupon he determines that the statue is actually menstruating and thus is nothing special.

"A chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle," the pope declares in the episode. "Chicks bleed out their vaginas all the time."

Somewhat predictably, the Catholic League was incensed by the satirical portrayal of the Virgin Mary and the pope and by the fact that the episode aired on the day before the Catholic Church celebrated its Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

The conservative group demanded an apology from Viacom, Comedy Central's parent company, to Roman Catholics everywhere and "a pledge that this episode be permanently retired and not be made available on DVD."

The Catholic League also sought a personal condemnation from Viacom board member Joseph A. Califano Jr., who the group noted is a "practicing Catholic."

Califano was only too happy to oblige. After viewing the episode, he released a statement calling the episode an "appalling and disgusting portrayal of the Virgin Mary."

"It is particularly troubling to me as a Roman Catholic that the segment has run on the eve and day of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day for Roman Catholics," Califano said.

Califano also pledged to have Viacom president and CEO Tom Freston review the episode.

Comedy Central did not respond to a request for comment on why "Bloody Mary" was yanked from the schedule.

Screencaps of the episode were no longer available on Comedy Central's press site or on comedycentral.com's South Park section.

The Catholic League previously tangled with Comedy Central in 2002 over a South Park episode titled "Red Hot Catholic Love," but failed to produce any results.

Happy Birthday Louise Braile...

...from the good folks at Google. Yes, I know it makes no sense to put braile on a flat surface computer screen but man how I love that logo treatment.

Via Phyll

Too Damn Cute

Lots of things have been really cute lately. There is a baby panda at the National Zoo and the world has gone ga-ga over him. You can watch him all day long on the pandacam if you want - he was just sleeping when I checked. Jessie is in total love and actually has a giant stuffed panda in her office now (courtesey of Animal Planet). It sits in one of her chairs and keeps her company. A few weeks back, Chris posted a link to this incredibly cute website called Cute Overload. Be careful, you'll start hugging and mushing the screen. Of course my dog Bingham looks like a fluffy Ewok and is way too cute to get angry at, even when he's unfurled an entire toilet paper roll and is caught in the act of happily muching away. Then there are these pics below of super cute baby penguins and the aforementioned panda cub:

So, it was great timing to see in today's NY Times Science section article about the science of cute. Here's a snipit: "Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

The article is actually fantastic, and some parts of it are incredibly funny, like how it says that humans find anything deemed needy and pathetic very cute because we ourselves are pathetic and so reliant on others when born.

Feel free to go to the Times article itself (and see some uber-cute pics) or if that isn't available, read the entire article after the jump. Its long (over 2000 words) but totally worth it.

January 3, 2006

The Cute Factor
By Natalie Angier

WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 - If the mere sight of Tai Shan, the roly-poly, goofily gamboling masked bandit of a panda cub now on view at the National Zoo isn't enough to make you melt, then maybe the crush of his human onlookers, the furious flashing of their cameras and the heated gasps of their mass rapture will do the trick.

"Omigosh, look at him! He is too cute!"

"How adorable! I wish I could just reach in there and give him a big squeeze!"

"He's so fuzzy! I've never seen anything so cute in my life!"

A guard's sonorous voice rises above the burble. "OK, folks, five oohs and aahs per person, then it's time to let someone else step up front."

The 6-month-old, 25-pound Tai Shan - whose name is pronounced tie-SHON and means, for no obvious reason, "peaceful mountain" - is the first surviving giant panda cub ever born at the Smithsonian's zoo. And though the zoo's adult pandas have long been among Washington's top tourist attractions, the public debut of the baby in December has unleashed an almost bestial frenzy here. Some 13,000 timed tickets to see the cub were snapped up within two hours of being released, and almost immediately began trading on eBay for up to $200 a pair.

Panda mania is not the only reason that 2005 proved an exceptionally cute year. Last summer, a movie about another black-and-white charmer, the emperor penguin, became one of the highest-grossing documentaries of all time. Sales of petite, willfully cute cars like the Toyota Prius and the Mini Cooper soared, while those of noncute sport utility vehicles tanked.

Women's fashions opted for the cute over the sensible or glamorous, with low-slung slacks and skirts and abbreviated blouses contriving to present a customer's midriff as an adorable preschool bulge. Even the too big could be too cute. King Kong's newly reissued face has a squashed baby-doll appeal, and his passion for Naomi Watts ultimately feels like a serious case of puppy love - hopeless, heartbreaking, cute.

Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.

The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.

The greater the number of cute cues that an animal or object happens to possess, or the more exaggerated the signals may be, the louder and more italicized are the squeals provoked.

Cuteness is distinct from beauty, researchers say, emphasizing rounded over sculptured, soft over refined, clumsy over quick. Beauty attracts admiration and demands a pedestal; cuteness attracts affection and demands a lap. Beauty is rare and brutal, despoiled by a single pimple. Cuteness is commonplace and generous, content on occasion to cosegregate with homeliness.

Observing that many Floridians have an enormous affection for the manatee, which looks like an overfertilized potato with a sock puppet's face, Roger L. Reep of the University of Florida said it shone by grace of contrast. "People live hectic lives, and they may be feeling overwhelmed, but then they watch this soft and slow-moving animal, this gentle giant, and they see it turn on its back to get its belly scratched," said Dr. Reep, author with Robert K. Bonde of "The Florida Manatee: Biology and Conservation."

"That's very endearing," said Dr. Reep. "So even though a manatee is 3 times your size and 20 times your weight, you want to get into the water beside it."

Even as they say a cute tooth has rational roots, scientists admit they are just beginning to map its subtleties and source. New studies suggest that cute images stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain aroused by sex, a good meal or psychoactive drugs like cocaine, which could explain why everybody in the panda house wore a big grin.

At the same time, said Denis Dutton, a philosopher of art at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, the rapidity and promiscuity of the cute response makes the impulse suspect, readily overridden by the angry sense that one is being exploited or deceived.

"Cute cuts through all layers of meaning and says, Let's not worry about complexities, just love me," said Dr. Dutton, who is writing a book about Darwinian aesthetics. "That's where the sense of cheapness can come from, and the feeling of being manipulated or taken for a sucker that leads many to reject cuteness as low or shallow."

Quick and cheap make cute appealing to those who want to catch the eye and please the crowd. Advertisers and product designers are forever toying with cute cues to lend their merchandise instant appeal, mixing and monkeying with the vocabulary of cute to keep the message fresh and fetching.

That market-driven exercise in cultural evolution can yield bizarre if endearing results, like the blatantly ugly Cabbage Patch dolls, Furbies, the figgy face of E.T., the froggy one of Yoda. As though the original Volkswagen Beetle wasn't considered cute enough, the updated edition was made rounder and shinier still.

"The new Beetle looks like a smiley face," said Miles Orvell, professor of American studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. "By this point its origins in Hitler's regime, and its intended resemblance to a German helmet, is totally forgotten."

Whatever needs pitching, cute can help. A recent study at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at the University of Michigan showed that high school students were far more likely to believe antismoking messages accompanied by cute cartoon characters like a penguin in a red jacket or a smirking polar bear than when the warnings were delivered unadorned.

"It made a huge difference," said Sonia A. Duffy, the lead author of the report, which was published in The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. "The kids expressed more confidence in the cartoons than in the warnings themselves."

Primal and widespread though the taste for cute may be, researchers say it varies in strength and significance across cultures and eras. They compare the cute response to the love of sugar: everybody has sweetness receptors on the tongue, but some people, and some countries, eat a lot more candy than others.

Experts point out that the cuteness craze is particularly acute in Japan, where it goes by the name "kawaii" and has infiltrated the most masculine of redoubts. Truck drivers display Hello Kitty-style figurines on their dashboards. The police enliven safety billboards and wanted posters with two perky mouselike mascots, Pipo kun and Pipo chan.

Behind the kawaii phenomenon, according to Brian J. McVeigh, a scholar of East Asian studies at the University of Arizona, is the strongly hierarchical nature of Japanese culture. "Cuteness is used to soften up the vertical society," he said, "to soften power relations and present authority without being threatening."

In this country, the use of cute imagery is geared less toward blurring the line of command than toward celebrating America's favorite demographic: the young. Dr. Orvell traces contemporary cute chic to the 1960's, with its celebration of a perennial childhood, a refusal to dress in adult clothes, an inversion of adult values, a love of bright colors and bloopy, cartoony patterns, the Lava Lamp.

Today, it's not enough for a company to use cute graphics in its advertisements. It must have a really cute name as well. "Companies like Google and Yahoo leave no question in your mind about the youthfulness of their founders," said Dr. Orvell.

Madison Avenue may adapt its strategies for maximal tweaking of our inherent baby radar, but babies themselves, evolutionary scientists say, did not really evolve to be cute. Instead, most of their salient qualities stem from the demands of human anatomy and the human brain, and became appealing to a potential caretaker's eye only because infants wouldn't survive otherwise.

Human babies have unusually large heads because humans have unusually large brains. Their heads are round because their brains continue to grow throughout the first months of life, and the plates of the skull stay flexible and unfused to accommodate the development. Baby eyes and ears are situated comparatively far down the face and skull, and only later migrate upward in proportion to the development of bones in the cheek and jaw areas.

Baby eyes are also notably forward-facing, the binocular vision a likely legacy of our tree-dwelling ancestry, and all our favorite Disney characters also sport forward-facing eyes, including the ducks and mice, species that in reality have eyes on the sides of their heads.

The cartilage tissue in an infant's nose is comparatively soft and undeveloped, which is why most babies have button noses. Baby skin sits relatively loose on the body, rather than being taut, the better to stretch for growth spurts to come, said Paul H. Morris, an evolutionary scientist at the University of Portsmouth in England; that lax packaging accentuates the overall roundness of form.

Baby movements are notably clumsy, an amusing combination of jerky and delayed, because learning to coordinate the body's many bilateral sets of large and fine muscle groups requires years of practice. On starting to walk, toddlers struggle continuously to balance themselves between left foot and right, and so the toddler gait consists as much of lateral movement as of any forward momentum.

Researchers who study animals beloved by the public appreciate the human impulse to nurture anything even remotely babylike, though they are at times taken aback by people's efforts to identify with their preferred species.

Take penguins as an example. Some people are so wild for the creatures, said Michel Gauthier-Clerc, a penguin researcher in Arles, France, "they think penguins are mammals and not birds." They love the penguin's upright posture, its funny little tuxedo, the way it waddles as it walks. How like a child playing dress-up!

Endearing as it is, Dr. Gauthier-Clerc explained that the apparent awkwardness of the penguin's march had nothing to do with clumsiness or uncertain balance. Instead, he said, penguins waddle to save energy. A side-to-side walk burns fewer calories than a straightforward stride, and for birds that fast for months and live in a frigid climate, every calorie counts.

As for the penguin's maestro garb, the white front and black jacket suits its aquatic way of life. While submerged in water, the penguin's dark backside is difficult to see from above, camouflaging the penguin from potential predators of air or land. The white chest, by contrast, obscures it from below, protecting it against carnivores and allowing it to better sneak up on fish prey.

The giant panda offers another case study in accidental cuteness. Although it is a member of the bear family, a highly carnivorous clan, the giant panda specializes in eating bamboo.

As it happens, many of the adaptations that allow it to get by on such a tough diet contribute to the panda's cute form, even in adulthood. Inside the bear's large, rounded head, said Lisa Stevens, assistant panda curator at the National Zoo, are the highly developed jaw muscles and the set of broad, grinding molars it needs to crush its way through some 40 pounds of fibrous bamboo plant a day.

When it sits up against a tree and starts picking apart a bamboo stalk with its distinguishing pseudo-thumb, a panda looks like nothing so much like Huckleberry Finn shucking corn. Yet the humanesque posture and paws again are adaptations to its menu. The bear must have its "hands" free and able to shred the bamboo leaves from their stalks.

The panda's distinctive markings further add to its appeal: the black patches around the eyes make them seem winsomely low on its face, while the black ears pop out cutely against the white fur of its temples.

As with the penguin's tuxedo, the panda's two-toned coat very likely serves a twofold purpose. On the one hand, it helps a feeding bear blend peacefully into the dappled backdrop of bamboo. On the other, the sharp contrast between light and dark may serve as a social signal, helping the solitary bears locate each other when the time has come to find the perfect, too-cute mate.

Just End The Season: Final Update

In type Jets fashion, they even made a mess of things when they won a game. Justin Miller, at the most inopportune time possible, ran back a kickoff to produce a come-from-behind victory which left the J-E-T-S with the 4th pick in next year's draft. If they lost, they would have drafted 3rd. Why couldn't you have done that when it actually mattered?!

After enduring last week's MNF debacle, you know, where they didn't get one real 1st down until 4:13 remained in the 3rd quarter, where they only ran 13 offensive plays in the entire first half (compared to 43 for NE), where they lost by the same score in the last MNF game (31-21) as they did in the very first one (to Cleveland on 9/21/70), I hoped for the best but expected the worst. True to form, the worst was what we got.

End Zone Notes:
>> Goodbye Wayne. Thanks for a decade of great football. You were the most powerful flashlight I've ever known.
>> Goodbye Vinny. I'm glad he set an NFL longevity record (TDs thrown in 19 consecutive seasons) on MNF - for one who literally got off of a couch to play this season, he deserves it.
>> Good luck Curtis. You don't have to worry about Reggie Bush anymore. I hope rehab goes well and that you're back badder than ever before.

Feliz Anos Nuevo

Here's to a year where hopefully we'll see (in chronological order):

• Health, happiness and prosperity for all my friends, family and their various entourages
  
• The end of all spam (spam, comment spam, splogs, etc)
  
• Something actually getting built at Ground Zero
  
• A clear policy introduced and implemented on how to bring our men and women home from Iraq
  
• MP3 digital downloads available by all for use in any player
  
• A huge US medal count along with the hockey gold in the Winter Olympics
  
• Many incredibly unprobable World Cup victories that, when strung together, end with the US holding the trophy
  
• The NY Yankees winning their 27th title
  
• Election results based on common sense, moderacy and respect for all instead of close mindedness, greed and fear mongering
  
• All those important items that I'm forgeting right now

One can hope.