Anniversaries of the Damned: Philly Fans Boo Santa

Via the 700 Level:

Nothing has continued to eternally damn the reputation of Philly sports fans more than their behavior on December 15th, 1968. On halftime of the Eagles' game against the Vikings, a 19-year-old in a Santa Claus suit came out to greet the fans, and was greeted with a shower of boos and a probably much-harder-to-ignore shower of snowballs. Despite occurring over 40 years ago, the incident continues to get brought up in almost every half-assed indictment of Philly Fans Gone Wild, as the primary evidence of the cold, black heart that apparently beats inside every one of us.

The rest of the post is actually devoted to justifying the booing. Seriously.

This is why I do not screw with Philly fans.

The Big 12?

Lets talk Big Ten expansion!

Lot's of people seems to like the idea because it allows the league to have a championship football game. There are other reasons, I suppose, but this really seems to be the only important one worth mentioning, which is kind of absurd on so many levels. But, whatever ...

So who gets the invite?

Apparently, Notre Dame is out of the picture while West Virginia, Missouri and Louisville are favored (at least according to Brooks). Let me just throw Mizzu off that list right away: their biggest rival is Kansas and I doubt they would diminish one of the most heated rivalries in college football by making it a non-conference match-up. West Virginia seems like a better idea, but they also appear to fit in well with the Big East, so who knows?

And Louisville? Well, if they're going to look at Louisville, the league may as well look at Cincinnati, which is on better footing in both basketball and football right now. This creates an instant in-state rivalry with Ohio State and gives a football team that's on a roll at the moment the momentum it probably needs to get beyond it's head coach defecting to ND.

Another choice: Iowa State. They're really not doing much in the Big 12 right now, fit in perfectly from a geographical perspective, and provide Iowa with an in-state, intra-conference rival. The down side: it's Iowa State. If you're going to invite another school into the league, why not make it a school in a major media market in the Eastern time zone.

If I were in charge of picking the 12th Big Ten school, I'd go with Pittsburgh, though I don't know if they're looking for a change of conference venue.

Any other ideas? Am I missing a school somewhere in the Midwest that would make a natural fit? Tell me what you got in the comments.

Bravo, GOP New Media Team!

You've done it again!

MORE: Unfortunately, all the links have now been broken by the URL shortener.

Is The Horizon League's B-Ball Blog Always this Awesome?

Fucking amazing.

[via D]

The 10 Best Films of the Decade

10.) Amelie (2001)


9.) No Country for Old Men (2007)


8.) Michael Clayton (2007)


7.) Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind (2004)


6.) Ratatouille (2007)


5.) The Dark Knight (2008)


4.) The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001-3)


3.) Children of Men (2006)

2.) There Will be Blood (2007)


1.) City of God (2002)

10 Zeitgeist Films from the Last Decade

These are ten flicks that you want to put in a time capsule to help archeologists better understand the decade we lived in. Most are exceptional (with one notable exception) and really tap into what it was like to be alive during the turn of the century.


The Jason Bourne Trilogy (2002-7)
He's not a ladies man. He doesn't have an arsenal of witty one-liners at his disposal. James Bond he is not, but that's not what we want from our super-spies these days (and it's no accident that when Daniel Craig took over as Bond he felt more like Bourne than Sean Connery). The editing in these films kicks as much ass as the action sequences.


Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
Here's a question: is the misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic Borat Sagdiyev merely a stranger in a strange land or is he the personification of how the rest of the world views the "ugly American" let loose in the "US and A"?


Twilight (2008)
Don't laugh: "Twilight" is actually a very well made movie that does something most films should try to do more of: isolate and examine a single human emotion, in this case teenage angst, and then layer every aspect of the project with details that accentuate the primary theme.


300 (2006)
During a decade where the "Clash of Civilizations" between Islam and the West dominated the news, it should be no surprise that one of the most ancient stories about this conflict should be re-told in contemporary way.


Saved! (2004)
In truth this is kind of a compromise picture. There can be little denying the enormous influence evangelicalism had on the decade and "Saved!" highlighted the best and worst aspects of that time in power.


The Saw Franchise (2004-present)
I have to admit to never having sat through more than just a few scenes of any of the now 6 Saw films, but it's hard to deny to the franchise that invented the incredibly lucrative "torture porn" genre does not have a place at the table during the now decade long discussion Americans have had over Guantanamo Bay.


An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
From a strictly filmic standpoint, this movie has "why bother?" written all over it: a lecture (boring) about science (double boring) given by Al Gore, a man who spent the better part of the last two decades being mocked as the most boring man alive. Yet Gore's clinical delivery only adds authority to the film's central disaster movie narrative.

There are also long term promotional effects of the film to consider. Right now, anyone running for President has to "write a book," but somewhere down the line they will also have to "make a movie," something most candidates have been reticent to do since Triumph of the Will . The formula is remarkably simple: find a problem, demonstrate a command of it's complexities, offer solutions and then run the candidate's personal story parallel to the policy narrative. Get used to seeing more pictures like it.


Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
If the only movie you saw on race relations in America was Paul Haggis' "Crash" you might be under the impression that we're a nation of bigots incapable of living in the melting pot. The truth isn't nearly that bad, but much more complicated. H&K does nothing better than playing with the absurdity of stereotypes during a time of exploding diversity.


Cloverfield (2008)
I'm kind of surprised there weren't more brazenly 9/11 movies like Cloverfield and Spielberg's remake of War of the Worlds: a mysterious, unexplained monster suddenly starts "terrorizing" New York City and a gang of yuppie/hipster hybrids taken with the decade's obsession of capturing every moment of their lives on some kind of digital device struggle to stay alive.


Avatar (2009)
Nope, we haven't seen it yet, but we're going to take the leap of faith on this one based the premise and Cameron's track record. Yes, it's Dances with Smurfs, but in another respect it's a metaphor for an activity people engage in everyday: how many online avatars do you operate? We increasingly live in two worlds -- one virtual, the other real. Cameron is obviously tapping into this phenomenon with his storyline, which also parallels the immersion effect that his new technology will apparently have on the audience.

Annals of Creative Diplomacy

The Republic of Nauru is an island nation in the Pacific Ocean that covers approximately 8 square miles and has an estimated population of 14 thousand people. Nauru’s government is notorious for its atypical methods of obtaining income, including becoming a haven for illegal money laundering, selling passports to foreigners, and running Australia’s illegal migrant detention center.

And Nauru is Russia's new best friend!

30 Years of Climate Change Articles

From the New Yorker [via DF]

Bart Stupak Wants to be Vatican Ambassador

Interesting/explains a lot ...

10 Movies From the Last Decade that Deserve a Second Look

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
The title alone is a provocation that invites the reader to leave his or her preconceived notions at the door. Wasn't Jesse James an outlaw? And aren't outlaws "brought to justice" as opposed to "assassinated"? And aren't the people who bring outlaws to justice "heroes," not "cowards"? "Jesse James" is a great existential Western in the spirit of "Unforgiven" that patiently deconstructs the mythology of the old American West, a terrific film about men trying to define themselves. It's one of the most beautifully shot films in ages and is the rare example of a movie with a voice over from an omniscient narrator that actually works, adding to skillfully crafted atmosphere and performances filled with moody brooding.

Sunshine (2007)
Everyone loved "Slumdog Millionaire," but Danny Boyle's "Sunshine" is one of the great sci-fi mind trips ever made, right up there with "2001." It's a film that touches on very primal nerves by remaking current anxieties into a hellish sci-fi narrative. Let's put it this way: how does your perception of the crew of Icarus II change when you realize that, in a sense, they are all suicide bombers?

Hot Fuzz (2007)
Along with "Shawn of the Dead," Edgar Wright has demonstrated that he doesn't make parodies so much as he makes loving homages to genres he knows all too well. "Shawn" mocked zombies one moment only to revel in absurdly gory violence the next -- all to great effect. Fuzz upped the ante by including all the violence necessary for a shoot 'em up cop drama and added a pretty good detective story with a hysterical villain played by Timothy Dalton.

Shaolin Soccer (2001)
It's a sports movie, a martial arts flick and a live action Looney Tunes carton all wrapped into one. Stephen Chow built a hilarious story that spoke the physical language of both Asian kung fu flicks and Western slapstick comedies and the result was one of the great pleasures of the decade to watch. Shaolin Soccer may be one of the rare films with a sense of humor that transcends cultural boundaries (or borrows from them all).

Blindness (2008)
Fernando Mierelles' adaptation of the novel by Nobel laureate Jose Saramago about a world where everyone goes blind except for a single person can be at times brutal to watch. It's easy to fall into the trap that the story is little more than a continuously pessimistic examination of human nature and social decay under extreme stress, but to do so would be a mistake. "Blindness" is an intensely spiritual movie about the distance between human being in the modern world and paints a bleak picture, but ultimately a redemptive one.
Hamlet 2 (2008)
A great movie that examines the thin line between genius and catastrophe via the staging of a "sequel" to a play in which everyone dies by a high school drama class directed by an out of work actor whose lack of acting ability is only exceeded by his inability to teach. Hilarity and calamity ensue. It's "The Producers" (complete with it's own signature "Springtime for Hitler" musical number) meets a delightful inversion of "Dead Poets Society."

Wonder Boys (2000)
One of the best movies ever made about writing and a vivid portrayal of the absurdities and triumphs of the endeavor. Wonder Boys is a great coming of age story that begs the viewer to ask "Whom, exactly, is coming of age? The awkward young undergrad or his even more dysfunctional college professor?" The scene where Rip Torn boldly -- and pretentiously -- declares "I am a writer!" to the thunderous applause of a conference of writers, may be one of the best moments of professional self-importance ever captured on celluoid.
Collateral (2004)
The best Michael Mann film since "Heat" and Tom Cruise's best acting work in ages. While there isn't much plot to speak of -- it's really just an episodic series of assassinations -- but the awesome and stylized action scenes really just move the central conflict of the film: the spiritual war between Vincent's (Cruise) nihilism and Max the cabbie's will to survive.


Downfall (2004)
Yes, it's the movie with Hitler in the bunker, but if that's the only scene you've ever seen from the movie you're missing a great film, probably one of the best historical dramas ever made.

24 Hour Party People (2002)
Michael Winterbottom must be England's version of Steven Soderbergh: someone who makes risky, high concept movies at a furious clip. 9 Songs, A Cock and Bull Story, and A Mighty Heart are all worthy of praise in one respect or another, but "Party People" sticks out for being one of the best movies made about music in a long time.

The 10 Worst Movies of the Decade

The last decade was a great one for movies, save for one disturbing trend: the devotion to franchising pictures. Many Hollywood films are now little more than expensive serials. There are exceptions -- like the Dark Knight -- but the worst movies to foist themselves on the public in the last 10 years were either sequels, remakes, reboots or spin-offs.

Here's what we thought were 10 of the worst. Movies like "Meet the Spartans" are dreck and never pretend to be anything more. We want to look at films that are made with the pretense of being good.

• 10.) Spiderman 3 (2007)

The heart and soul of the Spiderman flicks is the development of Peter Parker from lowly nerd to superhero. In 3, Sam Raimi examines the superhero's ego at the top of his game, but does so in such a silly fashion, it's difficult to see the hero's success transform him into a dick because Parker is really just portrayed as being just a dolt. It's a strategy that's very conducive to Raimi's film-making style, but doesn't really add anything to the character. Making matters worse, Mary Jane is seems whiny throughout the entire movie and for little reason. All the special effects in the world can save a film that's filled with emotionally in-congruent central characters.

• 9.) Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2003)

Where to begin? I was sooooo ready to blame the prequel catastrophe on Hayden Christensen after making my way through Episodes I-III. He was a pretty boy who kinda looked a little bit like Mark Hammil circa 1980, but who who clearly couldn't act. Then I saw "Shattered Glass" and realized that it was, in fact, George Lucas who didn't have the first idea how to direct this kid.

Episode III should have been one of the darkest movies ever made. The transition from Aniken Skywalker to Darth Vader should have been complete well before the movie ended, yet it isn't even completely over by the time we're given the last frame of the newly reconstructed Vader. Instead of building on the character's mythologies, Lucas demystified them, bringing them down to Earth for the sake of constructing a weak bridge from the story line of Vader to that of Luke Skywalker. Sigh ...

• 8.) Troy (2004)

For what is one of the richest stories in the Western canon, the Iliad seems almost impossible to film. Troy made one very good decision: leave the gods out of it. Then it made a very bad mistake: focus on Achilles the bad-ass, not the tragic warrior. The results were a muddled mess that tried to stay true to the original text while completely ignoring the most important emotional aspects from Homer.

• 7.) V for Vendetta (2005)

Alas! The Curse of Alan Moore continues ...

For a story that is so morally muddled (and done so with aggressive intention) it's amusing to see "V" become a shibboleth among a certain sub-sect of conspiracy-minded folks. It's basically a movie designed to appeal to males ages 14-17: lots of justified rebellion coupled with the suggestion that anyone has a chance of scoring with Natalie Portman. Never mind that in another respect it's a movie about a domestic terrorist who martyrs himself by glorifying another domestic terrorist.

The cherry on top: when V isn't kicking ass, he's an annoying snob. I don't want him to "free my mind" so much as I want him to shut the fuck up.

• 6.) The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

Everything from the self-important plot wiped completely clean of the subtlety that made the first Matrix so enjoyable to the hideously designed exo-skeleton gun suits worn by the rebel forces in Zion just didn't work. The first film was a splendid blend of postmodern and Eastern philosophy mixed with some revolutionary action sequences, "Revolutions" was just a mess that seemed to tapper off into nothing.

• 5.) Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)

I like to compare this incarnation with the far superior animated BBC version made in 1979. The makers of the 2005 edition were in such a rush to fill the movie with so many special effects that they sacrificed character growth for spectacle. One minute Edmund is a happy-go-lucky member of the family, the next he's Judas. One minute the White Witch is a cunning seductress, the next she's a totalitarian captor. The transition of the youngsters from scared kids to leaders of a mythical army is entirely unbelievable. Tilda Swinton is way over the top as the Witch, almost unthinkable for an actress who is a master if the low-key approach. It's a pity that a 2-D cartoon was able to add more depth to Lewis' creation.

• 4.) Ocean's Twelve (2004)

Way too full of itself. Toulour is a weak and vulnerable villain. The plot is far too "meta" and collapses in on itself entirely by the time a pregnant Julia Roberts playing Tess Ocean has to play a pregnant Julia Roberts as part of an elaborate ploy to steal a priceless work of art that they never really needed to steal from the museum in the first place ... Huh? It's as if the entire Ocean's crew landed in Europe an suddenly succumbed to the solipsism that is a side effect of the worse aspects of Continental philosophy.

• 3.) Evan Almighty (2007)

The most expensive comedy ever made and one without a single memorable joke. The film was so clearly designed to tap into the evangelical movie-goers demographic that in its attempt to be clean and pure not only forgot to bring the funny, but included some of the most provocative imagery of the last decade as if it were no big deal. Really, the sight of "Noah's Ark" rumbling through the National Mall only to "land" on the Capitol Building as if it were the New Ararat ... and nobody finds anything odd about this?

• 2.) Righteous Kill (2007)

A cop drama with Robert de Niro and Al Pacino -- what could go wrong? Well, just about everything. This movie is so frustrating that I'm just going to outsource all of my pent up aggression for how awful it is to Rotten Tomatoes. For what it's worth, this was the only entirely original film on this list.

• 1.) Gone in 60 Seconds (2000)

There are awful movies that are fun to watch and then there are awful movies that are shot-for-shot examples of how not to make a movie. The plot is derivative. The dialog is atrocious. The acting is a crime against humanity. The cinematography is pedestrian. For a movie that is little more than car porn, one can derive more enjoyment from last month's issue of Car and Driver.

60 Seconds never pretended to be anything more than a popcorn flick, but even by those marginal standards it sucked in phenomenal way. When "Battlefield Earth" was released many people called it the worst blockbuster ever made, but it's a least watchable for kitsch value alone. Not so "Gone in 60 Seconds," which merely sucks hard.

via WSJ

The Gore/Palin Debates

Fingers crossed!

More on the Oshkosh Corp./BAE Feud

Man, this thing just keeps going ... it's now moved on from the regional and trade press to the august (web)pages of Politico, where I can't help but get the feeling that OC gets the short shrift from the article and others like it.

Left unsaid if the fact that the Texas Congressional delegation is really fighting a fight that they have already lost. SECDEF Gates' trip to Oshkosh to praise workers was a pretty strong indication that the Pentagon is happy with the new MATVs. Also omitted: Oshkosh Corp. has been ahead of schedule in delivering the vehicles -- for the fifth month in a row -- which seems to answer one of the principle questions raised by the Texans.

Let's face it: this is about saving face and appearing to fight for jobs. I can't blame congressmen from a district which just lost lucrative defense contracts for doing everything they can to keep those jobs and don't expect them to give up the fight until the last truck of the contract rolls off the assembly line, but at some point empty gestures like these appear unfair to the folks who lost their jobs and are holding out hope that they might get them back or to the workers who now worry about potentially losing their own jobs. In the grand scheme of things those are probably small factors in a larger political calculus, but it might behoove a news service to help determine just where that line is.

Late Night Banksy

Tea Partiers Hanging Out with 9/11 Truthers

Truly a match made in Heaven:

A conspiracy theorist gentleman a couple rows behind me stood and explained he has video of the government planned demolition of the building in New York on 911. He said he voted for Bush but wanted Bush prosecuted for 911. I guess it fits with having Terry McCormick at the tea party forum. It was time to leave.

Get Your Nobel On

O, those rascally royals:

Dudley R. Herschbach, a Harvard chemist who was honored with the Nobel Prize in 1986, recalls an exchange with the king and queen about their pet, a pink lop rabbit. Herschbach, 77, informed the royal couple that his father had been the one who had created the breed at his California rabbitry.

“Well, the king was obviously skeptical,” Herschbach says, adding that “the queen was extremely gracious. She asks questions which my dad, of course, confirms, and then she turned to the king and says, ‘You see?’ The king says something else in Swedish. Then the king shut up. It was a charming view of the royal dynamics.”

Marc Ambinder on Palin's WaPo Op-Ed

Good stuff.

Via WSJ

Tiger's Party Girls

Easily the best piece I've read on the L'affaire Tiger Woods and one that gives the most plausible explanation for why some of the women are keeping their mouths shut: they're not "club girls" or "bar floozies," they're stone cold killers (not literally, of course):

So think of Rachel not as a spurned mistress but more as a faithful confidante in Woods' elite inner circle. She knows where all the coochie is buried (even more than we know at this time), and if there has been any kind of financial transaction made for her silence, it was done with that in mind. Another equally viable alternative is that Rachel had the good sense to know she'll have quite a career for herself in this "legit" business once all this Tiger mess has passed. She knows how to honor the omerta of all VIP hosts that Tiger paid big money for her to observe.

Strange and Kinda Awesome Fact of the Day

"[NFL Films] are the second-largest video archive in the world — after the archives from World War II."

Pretty cool.

You See, it was the Jews AND the Freemasons...

A very amusing conspiracy theory.

Palin's Dad Goes Rogue

Yeah, something tells me we haven't heard the last of this:

Palin, though notoriously ill-travelled outside the United States, did journey far to the first of the four colleges she attended, in Hawaii. She and a friend who went with her lasted only one semester. "Hawaii was a little too perfect," Palin writes. "Perpetual sunshine isn't necessarily conducive to serious academics for eighteen-year-old Alaska girls." Perhaps not. But Palin's father, Chuck Heath, gave a different account to Conroy and Walshe. According to him, the presence of so many Asians and Pacific Islanders made her uncomfortable: "They were a minority type thing and it wasn't glamorous, so she came home."

(emphasis added)

Skins Game

The number of women the press have identified who have purportedly slept with Tiger Woods is up to 8.

Does anyone want to wager that the number of named women who claim or are believed to have had affairs with Woods breaks 20?

Does the Hacked Email Trail End in Russia?

Looks like it:

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has discovered that the explosive hacked emails from the University of East Anglia were leaked via a small web server in the formerly closed city of Tomsk in Siberia.

Computer hackers in Tomsk have been used in the past by the Russian secret service (FSB) to shut websites which promote views disliked by Moscow.

[...]

Such arrangements provide the Russian government with plausible deniability while using so-called ‘hacker patriots’ to shut down websites.

In 2002, Tomsk students were said to have launched a ‘denial of service’ attack at the Kavkaz-Tsentr portal, a site whose reports about Chechnya angered Russian officials.

[...]

A Russian hacking specialist said last night: ‘There is no hard evidence that the hacking was done from Tomsk, though it might have been.

'There has been speculation the hackers were Russian. It appears to have been a sophisticated and well-run operation, that had a political motive given the timing in relation to Copenhagen.’

I don't know if Russian hackers are the best in the world, but they probably are most aggressive. The do make the folks over at 4Chan look like an Elks Club and tend to work with impunity so long as the targets of their escapades are outside greater Russia.

However, this doesn't really fit the MO of the FSB. It's one thing to launch denial of service attacks on a server, but stealing the email archives requires a fairly sophisticates PR offensive and knowledge of how they would play out in the West. The FSB is used to doing things through brute force. Then again, since they're dealing with foreigner in this case they may be operating under a new set of rules.

[via D]