* Redline on the weird-shit-o-meter.
For those of us who expected this administration to be very bad, the actual experience of living in the Age of Obama is… seriously weird.
Forget partisan politics. Even if you’re a freakin’ Democrat if you don’t have the feeling you’ve just unlocked Rod Serling’s door of the imagination and walked into the Twilight Zone, you must be off your lithium.
We the People elected a president who was supposed to be super-intelligent; never mind the “57 states” the “Austrian language,” and the academic transcripts that are evidently protected better than a lot of state secrets. (Hyperboly? How many state secrets have been leaked in the past few years? Wouldn’t you think a transcript would be easier to get ahold of?)
Now he’s cruising through his term with such an air of such eerie detachment it’s like, like… well, like nothing else in recent history comes to mind. It’s just weird.
And Democrats are getting alarmed, you can tell. When James Carville turns his shrill invective on a fellow-Democrat you know things are getting tense in the ranks.
* And by the way, why is the president so hinky about his academic record?
There is no shame in a “gentleman’s C,” academics isn’t for everybody – and it doesn’t neccessarily have anything to do with intelligence or leadership qualities. Winston Churchill had an abysmal academic record.
John Kerry promised to release his military record after the Swift Boat veterans made their charges. We’re still waiting, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why.
Hillary Clinton evidently has a class paper kept under lock and key, lest the public discover how far left her opinions tend, or once tended. But then, that hasn’t exactly been a secret either.
But grades? Come on, there can’t be anything more than a little embarrassment involved here.
* The TV guide channel on our cable provider was showing ‘Paris Hilton’s BFF’ when I switched on the other day. I’d previously seen ‘Paris Hilton’s British BFF’ in passing.
I miss the interactive guide you could actually page through the whole day’s choices like we had in Oklahoma. This one just scrolls through the channels in a two-hour window while they show a program above the display at the bottom.
For those of you fortunate enough not to have seen it, the show is an elimination-round contest between a number of young ladies contending to become Ms Hilton’s party-pal.
So now that I’ve seen more minutes of it than I’d have tolerated if I didn’t have to, I can honestly say one thing. If I were single and courting again, I’d rather hear from the object of my affections that she’d been a hooker than a contender for Paris Hilton’s BFF.
* We took the kids to see the new Karate Kid movie last night. You do the same, it’s a worthy remake of a great flick.
One thing they fixed in this movie. In the original, the one thing that nagged was the unrealistically short time Daniel-san had to train before the tournament. I don’t care how great your teacher is, if you’re going to face bigger opponents with a lot of lead time in their training, most likely you’re in the deep doo-doo.
And, these Chinese kids were good.
What they did in the remake was show in passing that Dre (Jaden Smith) had a background in gymnastics and dance. That made his ability to do some spectacular moves believable.
* I read an interview with Jackie Chan about his role. He was quoted as saying he hoped this film would give him credibility as an actor, rather than just an action star.
Mr. Chan, you were always a comedic genius. Nobody should put down the ability to do physical comedy. Just ask Charlie Chaplin or Jerry Lewis.
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