Windmill Tilter

Give me one good reason why I'm up at 2:30 in the morning listening to a Dwight Yoakam Christmas song! Laugh now, but find the song, listen to it, and tell me a better Christmas song:

Then a car just like Dad's

Pulled out and drove away

After mom said Santa couldn't stay

They both heard him coming

Saw Mom run down the hall and holler, "Wait!"

Doug you're drunk don't come inside

I'm not joking I've had all this I can take

He threw a present really hard

That almost hit Mom's new boyfriend Ray

And yelled ho-ho lucky for you she's here

And said that Santa can't stay

I'm watching the All-Star game on Fox right now and they're doing one of those painful retrospectives of the history of the host team, in this case the Pittsburgh Pirates. When they got to the part about Roberto Clemente, the greatest Pirate, who died when his plane crashed into the ocean off the coast of Puerto Rico while delivering aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua, the music Fox chose to play in the background was "Drown" by Smashing Pumpkins.

I bet they thought they were being poignant.

To my vast readership:

I implore you all to visit the blog of my friend Eric, hollywoodphony.com, who is trying to get noticed more widely. This applies particularly to the directors, producers, agents, famous people and star-fuckers who frequent my blog. He fancies himself a bit a wit and his blog is great sampling of his work. Even I have to admit at least two of his posts are mildly funny. He even has a podcast where he periodically interviews some interesting people. You can listen on his other blog, chadrobuckle.com, or you can find it on ITunes.

Your pal,

MJB

Here are the bookend paragraphs of a recent post on the blog for a pleasant little organization called "Stop the ACLU":

A recent appellate court ruling has decided that it is illegal for companies to pay Hollywood for movies and then sanitize them of gratuitous nudity, over-the-top profanity, and puerile violence. For years, Hollywood has found ways to insert into otherwise coherent storylines scenes of nudity, sex, profanity, and violence.

...

With the incredible success of films like The Passion of Christ, Lord of the Rings, and other family-friendly films one would think that the movie industry would see that there is an untapped market to be exploited. (Emphasis mine.)

Don't those two movies contain pretty much non-stop violence? Well, I went to CleanFlicks.com, apparently the most well-known of these companies, to check out a few things and you'll never guess which two movies (as well as The Chronicles of Narnia) are having their family-friendly content edited out.

So I checked out their editing standards:

We edit out:

Profanity This includes the B-words, H-word when not referring to the place, D-word, S- word, F-word, etc. It also includes references to deity (G-word and JC-words etc.), only when these words are used in a non-religious context.

Graphic Violence This does not mean all violence, only the graphic depictions of decapitation, impalements, dismemberment, excessive blood, gore etc.

Nudity This refers to male and female front and back nudity.

Sexual Content This includes language which refers to sexual activity or has sexual connotation. It also includes visual content of a graphic or stimulating nature. (Emphasis mine.)

I would love to see the remaining 17 minutes of these films. But of course, the violence per se is not the point for them because fundies actually don't hate violence, and I'm sure the vast majority of the violent scenes are not edited out of these Christian themed movies. One more important fact is that these are "Utahan" companies. Violence for the Lord is just as acceptable to them as lying for the Lord.

I was never totally happy with the previous name of this blog but I think this one works. One constant among people who know me is that they all tell me to settle down and not worry about the nonsense, in other words to stop tilting at windmills. I won't, but that's no reason for you people not to try.

Now, here's a puppy:

Awwwww.

Thus ends my dumb fascination with this sad creature's blog:

http://stephanieklein.blogs.com/greek_tragedy/2006/06/barely.html

Don't mind me, I'll be in the corner drinking razor blades.