Autism group vs. Big Brother

An autism group is going after Big Brother (the TV show, not the Orwellian concept):

Autism Group Demands Apology From CBS

Feb 18, 8:45 PM (ET)

NEW YORK (AP) - A national autism advocacy group is demanding an apology from CBS over a disparaging remark a contestant on the reality show "Big Brother" made about people with the disorder.

John Gilmore, executive director of Autism United, said Monday that his group has been trying to speak with CBS executives since last week's broadcast.

On that episode, a contestant named Adam, who claims to work for an autism foundation, said he would spend his winnings on a hair salon for people with developmental disabilities "so retards can get it together and get their hair done."

His partner, Sheila, told him: "Don't call them that."

Adam responded: "Disabled kids. I can call them whatever I want. I work with them all day, OK?"

The show's Web site describes him as a 29-year-old public relations manager from Delray Beach, Fla.

In a statement released Monday, CBS condemned Adam's comments, saying they don't represent opinions held by the network or the program's producers.

"We certainly find the statements made by Adam to be offensive but believe they were countered by the immediate reaction of shock and condemnation from a fellow houseguest, Sheila," the statement said. "Adam's remarks would not have been permitted to air unchallenged."

"Big Brother" also has been condemned for contestants' remarks on incest, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Some contestants have been removed following incidents that were deemed violent or racist.

The premise of the show is that contestants - or "houseguests" - are isolated from the outside world while under constant surveillance. Once a week, they vote to evict a member of the group.

When just two people remain, a jury of voted-off contestants picks the "Big Brother" winner of the $500,000 grand prize.

Autism is a complex disorder featuring poor social interaction and communication skills.

You know, I don't want to appear unsympathetic here. The remark was ridiculous, immature, etc. But the whole demand for an apology seems to show a complete lack of understanding of television in general and reality television in particular. This guy is not representative of CBS or even the show he's on. He's one guy on a reality show who made a stupid remark, a remark that was criticized by those around him. There was no endorsement of his stupidity. He said something offensive and was criticized for it. The message on the show was pretty clear: Calling people that name is a bad idea." I'm with CBS on this one: "We certainly find the statements made by Adam to be offensive but believe they were countered by the immediate reaction of shock and condemnation from a fellow houseguest."

Demand an apology from Adam when he gets out of the house (it doesn't seem possible he'll stay in there very long). But making a big issue out of it with CBS is just silly.

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Sensory deprivation (or, Time Warner kicks me hard)

Warning: long, rambling, rant-filled post ahead.

A couple weeks back, we had a bad windstorm that knocked our already rickety fence askew. After some deliberation (I don't feel like pulling the trigger and getting a new fence right now and I'm not too skillful with things like fence posts), we decided to have a local fencing company patch it up. The fencing people came and did their thing, and at 1:22 p.m. (we can pinpoint it because of the point at which our TiVo stopped recording a show), our cable went out.

It took us a while Friday night to cotton on to the fact that we'd lost all of our service. The first symptom was that the Internet was down, but that happens fairly frequently, and it's generally just a matter of swearing a little, unplugging the cable modem and wireless router, plugging them back in, and rebooting the computer. After that failed a couple of times Friday night, I put the television into live mode (with TiVo, we hardly ever watch live TV anymore) and realized that everything was out. I called the cable service, expecting for some reason that they would send someone out that evening. Of course not. The earliest that we could get anyone out was Sunday. I groused a little--okay, a lot; I'm not proud of it--and took the appointment: sometime between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Sunday morning. It was the first window available and I didn't think much about it. I hadn't made the connection with the fence yet and figured that it was probably a neighborhood outage and that I wouldn't need the appointment.

Lots of ranting after the jump.

This is the sensory deprivation part: It freaked me out. My anger during that initial phone call with the cable company was probably symptomatic of it: I wanted my Internet fix and I wanted it RIGHT AWAY. Our phone is Internet-driven, too (Vonage), so that was an additional pain. Our calls were automatically routed to my cell phone in the case of an outage (great feature), but it was just a different process. Dina's birthday was Saturday, and we were both afraid that we'd miss calls somehow. It's funny (or not) how dependent we are on the Internet. Saturday morning, Dina was attending a baby shower. The address and specifics were in a work e-mail. We had to take my laptop to Starbucks so that she could find out where she was going and the directions. We felt just weirdly out of sync with the world all weekend. I was the last to know that poor Roy Scheider died.

Anywhere, here's where we get to the part that had me about ready to strangle some people from Time Warner/Road Runner. Since the cable never came back on of its own accord (not a neighborhood outage), we were stuck with the 11 to 2 window on Sunday. Sunday we were supposed to go to Dina's parents' house to celebrate her birthday. I tried to reschedule the cable appointment, but by that time there were no more openings until Monday. I can work from home sometimes, but that's because I can connect to work via the Internet. Monday with no Internet would have meant burning vacation time. So we decided to keep the appointment with the hope that Time Warner would arrive early or at least promptly and I'd leave immediately afterward to join the family.

Side rant: I had lots of conversations with Time Warner over the course of the weekend. Each time I did this, I had to walk through a long menu. One of the steps was entering my phone number. Despite this, every time I reached an actual person, I'd need to repeat my phone number and also provide my name and address and the last four digits of my Social Security number. This is to ask sensitive personal questions like "why isn't the technician here yet" or "is it possible to change my appointment." And actually, after the first call or two, the last four digits of my Social Security number weren't good enough for Time Warner. I was told that, per FCC regulations, I now had to create a special "PIN number" (I refrained from telling them that "PIN number" is redundant since the "N" already stands for "number"). "Fine," I vented in frustration. "Use XXXX" (the last four digits of my Social Security number). "No, sir," I was told. I could have any "PIN number" but that. Grrrr. Time Warner, once I enter my phone number, every representative I talk to should damn well know my phone number. If I need to provide some other proof of identity, fine, but making my give you my name, my address, and a stupid PIN that you expect me to remember is too much. Pick one please.

Okay, back to the "action." Since Dina wanted to know when to expect me at her parents' (about an hour away from our house) I called Time Warner a couple of times to try to pinpoint the time better than 11 to 2. One rep was polite and suggested I call back at 11. The next rep was just rude about it, taking umbrage at the very concept of me wanting to know something beyond a vague three-hour window. No joy.

I puttered around the house, working on converting what has been a zero-car garage (way too filled with stuff) to a one-car garage. At about 1:15, the cable guy called to tell me that he was running late and that he'd be at the house sometime between 2:30 and 3. Or so. At this point I was hacked off. "I made my plans around you being here in the window I was promised," I told him. "I'm sure you can reschedule if that time doesn't work for you," he said smugly. Here's the thing. I was annoyed, even angry. But I never raised my voice to him. I never swore at him. I just said that I needed him there as soon as possible and said, "I'm just feeling frustrated because I've been waiting here for you to show up and if someone had let me know you were going to be late I could have been doing other..." That's as far as I got before the son of a bitch hung up on me. Hung up on me.

Look, folks. You never hang up on a customer. You certainly don't hang up on a customer who you've already inconvenienced, who has a legitimate beef and is keeping relatively calm about it. It's ridiculous, it's unprofessional, and I'm angry again just thinking about it.

I called back, but of course I was dumped into the basic Time Warner menu. I got through to a rep, explained the situation and told her that under no circumstances did I want my appointment canceled (because I figured that someone who hung up on a customer would also screw with him by canceling the appointment). She said that she understood and would enter something to that effect in the record, but that I should call back again at 2, after the official window was closed, to verify that the appointment was still open. Now this is patently ridiculous. I'd been clear. I'd complained about the technician who'd called me. The onus should have been on Time Warner to make things right, not on me to call back again to check. But at this point I was feeling kind of helpless. If I wanted the cable fixed, I needed to play nice, regardless of who was right and who was wrong.

I called back at 2. The appointment had been canceled. Whatever notation the rep had put in the system didn't prevent that. The rep I spoke to this time put me on hold for a few minutes, talked to a supervisor or something, and assured me that someone would still be out "today." He was putting the order back in the system, he said.

I sighed and went back to working on the garage.

A few hours later, no sign of Time Warner. I was wary of calling--the last rep had seemed to be on top of things and I didn't want to upset the apple cart. Plus I was sick to death of talking with Time Warner. But I eventually, a little while after Dina and the boys got back to the house from the excursion it turns out I could have gone on anyway, I broke down and called.

No, I was told, I didn't have someone coming out. The appointment had been canceled. I went through it all again. Near as I could understand from this rep, the appointment had been canceled again, for unknown reasons, between the last call and this one. No explanation for why it had been canceled or why no one had called me to inform me. I was polite, but firm. This was unacceptable. I needed a manager and I needed this handled. She agreed with me and said she'd get her supervisor for me. She put me on hold. I was on hold for close to 20 minutes, waiting for her to come back.

She didn't. Somehow my call was dumped over to another department, an Internet service center. The guy who picked up the phone was a techie. I still wanted to get a manager to deal with the situation. He wanted me to reboot my modem several times so that he could check the connection. I played along for a while and he finally agreed to shepherd my call through to someone who could help.

I finally got through to some saint named David who listened to my story patiently, agreed that I should have never been treated the way I was, and said that he become my ombudsman and help to resolve things. It nearly brought a tear to my eye that someone at Time Warner actually knows what an ombudsman is. He gave me enough information to be able to reach him directly again, then said someone would be in touch shortly, that he'd flagged my situation as "escalated."

Of course, no one got in touch.

I reached David again and he got his supervisor to talk to me. She apologized, but said that it was past the time when she could order a technician out. I could choose any time I wanted on Monday, and she'd credit me for half a month's service, but that was the best she could do.

The hell with it. I took it. I scheduled the appointment for the 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. window and called it a night.

I got a call from another technician this morning. I'd been booked for the 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. slot. Ye gods.

The ultimate happy ending here is that the technician was polite. He talked through the cable problem with me on the phone, agreed that it was probably a result of the fence people cutting the line, and told me I didn't even need to be there for the appointment. Why the hell couldn't someone have figured that out earlier in the process?

The cable was fixed when I got home. I've got no idea whether I'll stay with Time Warner after this. What a terrible, stupid system.

End of rant.

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Chuck on tonight

For my fellow Chuck fans out there, FYI: Chuck is on tonight, twice, in two new episodes "sandwiching" Celebrity Apprentice.

This seems like really stupid programming to me, along the lines of what I complained about for the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles premiere. I mean, you've got a show that's somewhat established and has a following, its viewers are used to watching it on Monday nights. Why drop in two new episodes on a completely different night? I feel like there's some executive anxious to cancel the show, expecting it to tank in this slot and then planning to use the bad ratings as a "see, I told you so" excuse. But what do I know?

Anyway, if you like the show, please watch or record it. Don't give them an excuse to cancel this one.

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Idol musings

We watched and enjoyed American Idol tonight. It was about half an hour too long and spent too much time indulging a few wackos (the glittery woman who Simon said looked liked Willem Dafoe, the guy in the Princess Leia slave girl outfit, etc.). But it was fun and we didn't fast forward through much. I'm simultaneously looking forward to and dreading the Dallas auditions, wondering what kind of picture they'll paint of the Big D.

Dina and I didn't start watching the show until toward the middle of season five (the one with Daughtry, Katharine McPhee, Taylor Hicks, Elliott Yamin, etc.), so I'm probably not quite as jaded as other viewers (I also missed big chunks of last season because I was working on revisions on Devil's Cape). Anyway, as a fan of the season and a particular fan of McPhee and Hicks, I picked up their CDs when they debuted, and recently got Yamin's CD for Christmas. As much as I liked McPhee and Hicks, their CDs were... not very good. A few good tracks on each (and "good" is pretty generous). Yamin's was even worse. I think I like maybe one song on it. And recent Idol winners and near-winners are getting dropped quickly by record labels.

So what's the deal? They're enjoyable on the show. We root for them. They're solid entertainers. Why are their CDs mediocre?

I guess it's kind of obvious, at least to me, but the songs are just bad. Yamin's CD even has a track ("A Song for You") with a line that says "I've sung a lot of songs and I've made some bad rhymes." Buddy, if your CD contains a slew of bad rhymes, and yours does, you sure as hell don't want to bring additional scrutiny to that fact.

I'm not sure how much of the blame goes on the singers (I'd guess a little) and how much on the producers (I'd guess an awful lot--the buck should stop there), but the musical choices are just awful. Let's think about American Idol a bit. It showcases talented singers (at least by the time you get to the end of the process) singing familiar songs. Good songs. We get used to Katharine McPhee or Blake Lewis or whoever lending a personal voice and vision to songs that are generally familiar to us. So why make their CDs so different. Why make Katharine McPhee's first album be filled with a bunch of crappy songs we've never heard before that don't showcase her talents particularly well?

Keep in mind that I don't know anything about the contracts these singers end up with or what the rules are for licensing songs. But if I were producing a CD for an American Idol winner, I'd pick maybe a couple of new songs, if there was something that really showcased the winner's style. But I'd fill the album with music more like what the American Idol fans are used to hearing from the show. Katharine McPhee's "Over the Rainbow" is great. I downloaded the MP3 from iTunes. But it's not on her album. Why not? Why not have her sing some standards? Why not track down some songs that she didn't sing on the show, but that are available and known and that work for her voice?

I'd look for songs that lended themselves to interpretation by the singer, rather than just straight reproduction of how earlier singers had done the songs. If my star had a country style, I'd look for some decent rock songs and make slightly country versions of them. And vice versa.

I'd take good songs that you don't hear very often anymore and have our star make them new again (I'd love to hear "Dumb Things" more often).

New songs are fine, but they're not what we're used to hearing from the Idol contestants and they have to be catchy and good if the singer is going to succeed. What bugs me is that these very talented and charismatic singers end up getting reps as failures when the fault really lies with the people making the song choices for their albums.

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Spider-Man's marriage goes away

Marvel has completed its new "One More Day" storyline. In a nutshell, Aunt May has been shot. Mephisto (a Marvel stand-in for the Devil) approaches Spider-Man and Mary Jane with a proposal: He will save Aunt May, but in return, they have to let him change history so that they were never married.

Blech.

Major, major blech. This one just hacks me off on several levels. The idea that Spider-Man literally makes a deal with the devil. The sloppy mess it makes of continuity. And especially the attitude that Joe Quesada and some of the creators have espoused that Spider-Man is more interested single than married, like there are no interesting stories to be told about married heroes.

Another aspect that bugs me is a phenomenon I've seen often in comics. I don't really have a name for it other than "overly complicated back story." Iconic heroes (and Spider-Man is one) generally have fairly simple backgrounds. "Rocketed from the dying planet Krypton as a boy and developing amazing powers, Clark Kent grew into the hero of Metropolis, Superman." "Orphaned as a young boy, billionaire Bruce Wayne set out to strike fear into the hearts of criminals as the masked Batman." Etc. Etc. You can hang rich tapestries on the characters, but their backgrounds are easy to grok. Other characters, particularly those developed in the midst of other characters' comic books, are often much less iconic.

Take Superboy (Connor Kent), for instance. In his initial back story, he was a clone created to match Superman, but he wasn't really Superman's clone (for reasons I can't remember--something about them not being able to get a good cell sample or Superman's cells being uncloneable). He was actually the clone of a character most people have never heard of, Cadmus chief Paul Westfield. His powers were like Superman's, but not exactly. And he couldn't age because he was a clone. In terms of background, he was kind of a mess. DC eventually retconned his background so that he was actually a clone of Superman and Lex Luthor. It didn't necessarily jibe with previous stories, but it was a heck of a lot cleaner and easier to digest. Don't get me started on the Matrix version of Supergirl and her background.

Anyway, back to Spider-Man, we've taken a character with a fairly simple background and added this very important event to his background, adding a mystical element and making his continuity a mess. It's just sloppy, overall, and makes the comic less accessible for the man on the street:

"Hey, I thought he was married?"

"Yeah, well, he was, but see, he made a deal with the devil and now his wedding never happened."

"How exactly does that work? Is it like an annulment?"

"No, I mean it never really happened. Not that any of it ever really happened, but you know what I mean?"

"So, wait, these issues where he was married to the supermodel, and those comic strips in the daily paper, they're like, not real stories?"

"Nope."

"So that issue where he fought Doc Ock and saved Mary Jane, that didn't happen?"

"He still fought Doc Ock. He just wasn't married."

"Huh." Scratches head, walks away, buys manga instead.

Blech.

I'd be very tempted to start picking up Spider-Man again with Dan Slott taking over as a writer. Unfortunately, I just can't bring myself to do it. I'm voting with my feet.

Quesada said, "The truth of the matter is that if the fans truly want a married Peter and MJ with kids, then we have an incredible book called Spider-Girl. If this is truly what fandom wants, to see Peter go through the natural progressions of life, then I expect orders on Spider-Girl to go through the roof in the next month." He was being sarcastic. He's nearly canceled Spider-Girl more than once. But I'm picking up a copy of Spider-Girl this month (the next issue comes out Wednesday). I encourage you to do the same.

You can read more about the Spider-Man stuff in Newsweek.

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Crazy like a fox? Stupid like FOX

I'm mildly enthused about Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which airs tonight for the first time. (I'm containing my enthusiasm because FOX has burned me before on its sci-fi shows, canceling them way early, and because some recent sci-fi shows, like Bionic Woman, have been disappointing.)

But what concerns/burns me the most is FOX repeating the same stupid, show-killing premiere format as with Drive (another promising genre show, one that FOX drove into the ground). The show's normal timeslot is Monday nights, but they're debuting it Sunday night and following it up with a new episode the night after. It's just dumb--it requires a sudden, strong commitment from a public not used to it yet (it was worse with Drive, where they started it with a two-hour pilot, meaning that if you were intrigued by the show, you had to commit to three hours of viewing within 25 hours if you didn't want to be hopelessly lost). And I just don't get the sense of putting it on for the first time in a time slot you aren't going to have it occupy. It's not a good way to get people in the habit of viewing it and it's a piss-poor way to test out how it's going to work in its target slot.

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Woo hoo! We're number 1!

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070602/D8PGPTPO0.html

Sigh. Sometimes Texas sucks.

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Mirna and Schmirna

This article in the Deseret Morning News perfectly sums up what drives me nuts about Charla and Mirna on The Amazing Race.

The part about them being ugly Americans is particularly on-target. The way they talk to cab drivers and others they encounter is despicable.

Great show. I can't wait until they're no longer a part of it.

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Priests to purify site after Bush visit

A funny story I came across from Excite. If the Democrate retake the White House next year, I wonder if they could hire these guys. The picture of the ruins is one I dug up, so to speak. More conversation, and a question of semantics related to the Bush administration, below the article.

Priests to Purify Site After Bush Visit
Mar 9, 12:20 AM (ET)
By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

Tiney said the "spirit guides of the Mayan community" decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. He also said the rites - which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles - would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

Bush's trip has already has sparked protests elsewhere in Latin America, including protests and clashes with police in Brazil hours before his arrival. In Bogota, Colombia, which Bush will visit on Sunday, 200 masked students battled 300 riot police with rocks and small homemade explosives.

The tour is aimed at challenging a widespread perception that the United States has neglected the region and at combatting the rising influence of Venezuelan leftist President Hugo Chavez, who has called Bush "history's greatest killer" and "the devil."

Iximche, 30 miles west of the capital of Guatemala City, was founded as the capital of the Kaqchiqueles kingdom before the Spanish conquest in 1524.

This article reminded me of something that's been on my mind the last couple of days. Media stories about Bush's trip to Latin America have discussed his early promises of focusing attention on relations with Latin America, and how that changed after the September 11 attacks. The phrase I've been hearing a lot, and not from Bush's spokespeople, but mostly from news people on NPR, is that the war on terror "took priority" over relations with countries in Latin America. To me, that's pretty poor phrasing coming from a group that's supposed to be neutral to Bush, and certainly for one that's been accused of being too liberal and too hard on him. It takes a certain responsibility off of his shoulders.

What follows is probably less of a political rant than a linguistic one, so bear with me here. Priorities are assessed and decided on. What made the war on terror a priority over Latin America was a decision from the Bush administration, conscious or unconscious. The Bush administration made the one thing a priority over the other. It didn't just happen by itself.

Now I'm not saying that that was a bad decision. I think that Bush and his cronies have made lots of bad decisions, and that history will continue to turn up more and more of these. But if I had been president, I would have started focusing on terrorism over Latin America, too.*

On the other hand, the fact remains that a choice was made here. To use an extreme example, if there's a fire and I grab my children and get them out of the house and leave a toaster to get burned, that's a choice. It's the right one, but it's a choice. My kids didn't "take priority" over the toaster. I prioritized my kids above the toaster. The war on terror didn't "take priority" over Latin American relations. The Bush administration prioritized the war on terror over Latin American relations.

* At least for the year or so following those attacks. I likely wouldn't have gotten us into a war on Iraq, though, so I would have had a lot more time on my hands to get back to addressing other things, including maintaining relations with neighbors in the Western Hemisphere, signing the Kyoto Protocol, not alienating the entire world, etc.

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And the laugh riot that is Funky Winkerbean continues

On the one hand, I salute Tom Batiuk's continued willingness to address real-life drama and pain head-on. On the other hand, I pretty much prefer to turn to the comics to escape depressing news. I've felt like poor Wally has had death's hand on his shoulder ever since he was called back into active duty, especially with the arrival of little Wally and all. When Tuesday's strip had him proposing that, instead of calling the baby "little Wally," they should call him "old, original Wally" and the baby "new, improved Wally," I had a feeling that they were leading up to a clearer distinction of "dead Wally" and "orphaned Wally" instead.

But I hope he pulls through.

And I'll be back to read the strip again tomorrow, which I guess is what Batiuk wants.

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The cranky post

A friend of mine chastised me for not keeping up the blog. I haven't been sure what to post--I didn't want to phone something in, but haven't had the full time, energy, and enthusiasm for something elaborate.

So anyway, I thought I'd try to at least get something out there with a few quick hits, touching on a few pet peeves. Because, you know, I don't think anyone has ever used his blog to vent about pet peeves before, so I'm breaking really fresh ground here.

1. Dear radio ad makers: I'll fully admit that loud sound effects, although annoying, can be attention-getting. However, before you plan your next ad with honking horns, screeching tires, and the sounds of one car smashing into another one, please let me draw your attention to a little-known statistic that your demographic studies might have overlooked: Apparently, many people actually listen to the radio while driving. Who knew? So a side effect of this hidden population of car-driving radio listeners is that sound effects that make these drivers think that they're in imminent danger of being smashed to bits are probably a bad idea. Sorry to spoil your fun.

2. Dear retail sales force: I understand that this is the holiday season and that you're overworked and underpaid and all that jazz. I sympathize. But please understand that when we're searching your labyrinthine stores for a particular item to no avail, and when we finally manage to track down someone to ask for help, the last thing in the world we want to hear is "If we had it, it would be..." (usually accompanied by a vague arm gesture that encompasses half the store and outer Mongolia). I want precision. I want to know whether you have it or not, where the heck it is, and, if you don't have it, where I can find it and how you can help to get one for me. The next time I hear "If we had it, it would be..." my head is going to spin around.

3. I love Santa Claus. I love the whole idea of Santa Claus. I love talking about Santa Claus with my boys. You know what I don't love? Santa Claus "outers": people who seem to go out of their way to make it difficult for me to help my kids believe in Santa Claus a little longer. Seeing a cheap, poorly outfitted Santa Claus every place I turn around hacks me off. How am I supposed to explain the contrast between the Santa whose lap they sit on in our planned trip to the mall to visit Santa and the scrawny Santa with the beard recklessly slipping off slouched at the front of Half-Price Books with no damn warning? Or the Santa waving from the photo store at the mall? Or the Santa making a special surprise appearance at the neighborhood gathering? There shouldn't be a Santa Claus at every single damn retail establishment in America. If you feel you must have a Santa Claus, follow these rules:

• Have a good one.
• Have a prominent sign letting parents know what to expect when they walk into your store or attend your event.
• Put Santa off somewhere away from the center of things or else surrounded by Christmas decorations so that the only people who actually see him are the people who want to see him.

Don't foist your bad Santas on me!

4. Oh, and while you're at it, suggesting to my wife, in front of our five-year-old, that something would make a good stocking stuffer? Probably a bad idea. Santa stuffs stockings, not Mom and Dad. Moron.

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Indy IV news scares Rob

My commentary below...

From Sci-Fi Wire:

Lucas: Indy IV Starts In 2007

George Lucas told Empire magazine that he, director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford are aiming to shoot a proposed fourth Indiana Jones movie by mid-2007, with an eye to a 2008 release. But, he added, getting everyone back together may not be easy.

"Before, I was just working with Steven and Harrison," Lucas told the magazine. "Now everybody's a superstar, so it's a little bit more difficult than it was then."

As for the story? "We're basically going to do The Phantom Menace," Lucas said cryptically, referring to Star Wars: Episode I. "People's expectations are way higher than you can deliver. You could just get killed for the whole thing. ... We would do it for fun and just take the hit with the critics and the fans. ... But nobody wants to get into it unless they are really happy with it."

Lucas added: "The 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation has freed up an idea for a plot that was originally deemed too incendiary. I discovered a McGuffin. ... I told the guys about it, and they were a little dubious about it, but it's the best one we've ever found. ... Unfortunately, it was a little too 'connected' for the others. They were afraid of what the critics would think. They said, 'Can't we do it with a different McGuffin? Can't we do this?' and I said no. So we pottered around with that for a couple of years. And then Harrison really wanted to do it, and Steve said 'OK.' I said, 'We'll have to go back to that original McGuffin and take out the offending parts of it, and we'll still use that area of the supernatural to deal with it.'"

Okay. Is there any way that this doesn't sound like a horrible beginning to this movie?

First, we've got Lucas apparently calling a lot of the shots storywise. Lucas used to be an amazing talent, but I've seen precious little evidence that his talent remains these days, especially after the terrible Star Wars prequel trilogy, which showed that he'd lost touch with the human connection that any great story has to have.

Then we have his own lukewarm discussion of the McGuffin (MacGuffin is the preferred spelling, by the way). I understand that he's trying to talk about the movie without giving away actual details of what he's talking about, but he sounds completely unenthusiastic about it. If this movie is to be made, it needs to be a labor of love for the primary storytellers involved. They need to be engaged in it and excited about it, or it's going to be a terrible disappointment.

Finally, when he said "We're basically going to do The Phantom Menace"? My blood froze. I'd have felt better if he'd said "We're basically going to do Plan 9 from Outer Space" or "We're basically going to do Glitter" or even "We're basically going to do Gigli." What the hell is he talking about?

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I can't help myself

According to an article on MSNBC.com, President Bush said today that, "I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English...."

Sigh. Seems like it should be a requirement for presidents, too.

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The "mailman" joke is aging badly

I have brown hair. Dina has brown hair. Our younger son, Zack, has brown hair. Our older son, Alex, has blond hair. Ever since Alex was born, we have occasionally had people make comments along the lines of "where did he get his blond hair?"

Some of these are perfectly innocent--they generally segue immediately into questions about our parents' hair, etc. They're genuinely curious.

But others, most often complete strangers, seem to find this an opportunity for comedy. "Where did he get his blond hair?" they ask in teasing tones. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. Often, they suggest that the mailman is responsible. This evening, we attended an orientation function for kids signing up for kindergarten in the fall at our local elementary school. A lady (who had seemed perfectly nice earlier) asked us, rather loudly, about Alex's hair, then followed it up with an amused glance at me. "I bet you'd like to know," she said. Ha ha. Mind you, this was in front of Alex.

How many possible ways could this joke go wrong for someone? I mean, in our case, there's no question that Alex is my child, and Dina's. But what if that weren't the case?

Let's take fictional family A. They've adopted a child with blond hair. Or fictional family B. The dad has died and the mother has remarried. Or fictional family C. The mom had a wild fling at one point and the child isn't her husband's, but they've reconciled and he treats the child as his own. I'm sure you could come up with more possibilities on your own. Is it a good idea, in any of these situations, to make a potentially awkward situation (for the parents) even worse? Is it ever a good idea to suggest to a child that his parents might not really be his parents?

For the record, our parents also have dark hair, but Dina's brother's hair was blond when he was young. My grandfather had blond hair, and my aunt is blonde. So Alex's hair is a little unusual, maybe, but nothing far from the family tree. I have absolutely no doubt that Alex is mine, nor should anyone who really pays attention for more than a few seconds--we've got too many traits in common (including, of course, dashing good looks, keen intellect, and charming personalities). But you know, if he hears a half dozen strangers asking how he can have blond hair when his parents don't, he might eventually start to wonder, every once in a while. He might start to doubt us. And making a child doubt his parents isn't worth the price of a joke. Particularly a stupid one.

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Oh, Pat...

Pat Robertson has mouthed off again.

I'd like to be a fly on the wall, so to speak, when Robertson eventually makes his way to the hereafter. I'm not wishing evil on the man ("don't hate the hater"), and hope he lives to a ripe old age. I just think that he's going to be in for a world of surprises in the afterlife. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see his jaw drop as he discovers that his narrow, hateful, exclusionary view of the world just doesn't match up with whatever he finds in the hereafter?

That would be a little glimpse of heaven all in itself.

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April showers... a load of bile on her viewers

Every episode of Big Brother frustrates the heck out of me these days. The show is a paean to mediocrity. The skilled, intelligent players are consistestenly voted out by the lesser lights. First Kaysar was booted because of the machinations of the pathetic, spineless Jen, and now April, a boring, sanctimonious, self-righteous, annoying player if ever I saw one, has managed to set things up to "back door" James, one of the better players the game has seen. Pfui.

I could rant about Jen at some length, but I'll sum it up pretty quickly. When America voted by a whopping 82 percent to put Kaysar back in the house, he ended up in a head of household ("HOH") competition within minutes. Fourteen hours later, it was down to him and Jen, and he could have easily gone longer. But (probably trying to position himself as a nice guy and not a huge threat) he offered her an alliance instead of waiting her out. She agreed to it, and then, days later, went back on what she'd said. If she'd been lying to him at the time, out of strategy, I would have probably respected her for playing the game that way. But she wasn't lying. She meant it, then proceeded down a path of rationalizations for going back on what she'd said and screwing him over. What a weasel.

What was particularly interesting about tonight's episode, though, was the America's Choice feature and the emotions it brought up in the players. To put it simply, viewers voting on their cell phones (and maybe on the web site--I didn't vote on this one) could decide which player they wanted to receive a phone call from a loved one. The voters picked California girl Janelle, probably because they thought it would be entertaining to see her receive a call from Michael, the player she'd "hooked up" with earlier in the game. The players in alliance annoyingly christened "the Friendship" were incensed. They have somehow painted themselves as the "good guys" of the game, blissfully unaware at how disliked they generally are by the viewers. They couldn't imagine that voters would pick slightly trashy Janelle over one of them. Yvette, known around our house as "the Mouth" was reduced to tears.

But April's reaction was the most entertaining. She was convinced that the contest was rigged and went so far as to say that anyone who voted for Janelle was a "piece of sh!t" and that the American public must be stupid. Way to respect your audience there, April!

Eh. Enough time spent on Big Brother tonight.

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Things that drive me nuts about Big Brother, part 2

In my earlier post about Big Brother, I forgot to mention a doozie: the fact that people in the house talk as though people who are voted out of the house are actually dead. This fluctuates for me between being melodramatic and being just plain creepy. Notice the lovely image of James at the left, munching down on the show's ubiquitous PB&J (I'd be screwed if I were on the show, by the way, as I can't stand peanut butter). His quote practically vibrates with melodrama. "You can't kill me!" Hello! Eviction from Big Brother does not equal death.

Still, I'm hoping that they resurrect Kaysar this week. :)

By the way, the "annekat is not here" blog (which I discovered after she posted a comment here--thanks for visiting!) has an interesting, if merciless, post about Julie Chen. I don't mind Julie as much as Anne apparently does, but she's not exactly the most scintillating host in reality TV history and it drives me nuts that her scripts are so repetitive, unoriginal, and wooden.

EDIT: Fixed spelling of Kaysar's name.

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Things that drive me nuts about Big Brother

Okay. True confession time.

Dina and I watch Big Brother 6. I'm not particularly proud of it, but there you go. Like the other Big Brother shows (we've watched all except Big Brother 2), it's somewhat addictive--the shenanigans, the shifting alliances, the silly games, the attempts at surprises (this year, the "Summer of Surprises," has so far failed to surprise much). And it's something we watch and chat about together during the summer.

But there are things that drive me nuts about the damn show, too. For example:

• Every time Julie Chen says the words "send shockwaves through the house."
• Stupid nicknames (in this case, Eric being called "Cappy" all the time).
• The way that players mangle the English language: "me and Kaysar have gotten to be good friends in the house" or "James and myself have formed an alliance." Argh!
• The way that Julie Chen mangles the English language (although I guess I should blame her script writers). Folks, "they" is not a singular pronoun.
• The way the show keeps trying to pretend that its secrets are still secrets. The players figured out the first week that they all had secret partners, but the game tried to milk it for weeks, acting as if the players should be surprised at this great secret they figured out early on. Or this week, when the "big reveal" is that one evicted player will return to the household. My dog Callie saw that one coming. Sigh.

Eh. I'll undoubtedly have more soon.

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