March 2009 Archives

On Craig Ferguson's show the other night, he featured the old rock band Chicago performing their hit "Saturday in the Park".

Was it just me, or did they look like a bunch of over the hill has-beens trying to recapture their long lost youth?

And I got to thinking, how many times must they have performed that little ditty over the years? And what was that silly looking keyboard the lead vocalist had hanging around his neck?

Out of curiosity, I searched the Google and found this performance of the same song from a few years ago:

They don't look anywhere nearly as desperate or ridiculous in that clip. So maybe on the Ferguson show they were overcompensating for a non-responsive audience. Maybe?

Today apparently is the day for the series finale of Battlestar Galactica. [yawn]

I do not understand the popularity of that show. I'm not talking about its overall ratings, but about the vast number of intelligent people, whose opinions I normally respect, who seem to love the series.

People like Pamela Gay, Phil Plait, Joss Whedon.

Anyway I forced myself to watch for awhile, and by forced, I mean it was sometimes excruciating having to sit through some of the episodes, which seemed to consist mostly of lingering close-ups of Edward James Olmos's face.

Do we have a picture of Olmos?

I'm told that that is not actually a photo of Olmos, but I digress.

The show is written by apparently ignorant people, which is evident from the first few minutes of the pilot which 1) depicts people smoking cigarettes on board a space vehicle and 2) doesn't realize that there are no sounds in space because it is a virtual vacuum. Yes, the show is that frakking stupid.

Normally those idiocies alone would have stopped me from watching it, but as I said, a lot of highly intelligent folks have praised the show.

So I kept at it, until the first episode of its final season, when I couldn't take it any longer.

So to those who enjoy the show, I hope the finale surpasses your expectations.

BTW, one of the few things I actually liked about the show was its invention of the curse word "frak". You instantly knew what it meant by its context. Alas, even that they ended up abusing, by frakking it to death.

As I said, a stupid and boring show.

Vincent Fumo was found guilty of all 137 charges.

Nice going, Justice System!

Last week The Daily Show with Jon Stewart took aim at CNBC and showed how its analysts don't know what they are talking about.

Well, Jim Cramer pushed back, and now Jon Stewart shows just how foolish Cramer really is. Here's the clip:

Jon Stewart asks the question, why does anyone watch CNBC anymore?

And he demolishes the notion that the DOW is an indicator of anything.

I just finished reading a wonderful book called The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. It's not new, it was published in 2003, but it might be made into a movie sometime this year.

It's a non-fiction book set in the early 1890's, and it tells three interconnected stories:

1) Chicago architect Daniel Burnham's efforts to construct the World's Columbian Exposition (the White City of the title).

2) Patrick Prendergast, who bears certain resemblances to Charles Guiteau, but Prendergast's target is the mayor of Chicago.

3) A man calling himself Dr. H. H. Holmes, who operates a hotel some of whose guests "never thereafter were heard of again" (the devil of the title).

The stories would each be interesting in themselves, but they intersect in some fascinating ways.

Throughout the entire book there are wonderful little tidbits of history. For example, the designers of the exposition wanted to outdo the Eiffel Tower, which had been erected just a few years previously. The narrative of the man who achieved that and the way he did it form some of the most interesting passages; the author conceals the man's name early on so as not to give away the surprise (for those of us who didn't know the story).

BTW, a scene in Show Boat takes place at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley make appearances in the book (so there's an Annie Get Your Gun reference).

And I was reminded of Sweeney Todd.

A lot.