Aaron posted the truly fabulous video of Debbie Harry performing “Call Me” on the Muppet Show … because nothing says “male escort work” like brightly colored hand puppets! But I have to say, my all-time favorite Muppet Show musical number is still Leo Sayer dancing with a giant green bird.
Bonus: Leo many, many years later: “I’m leaving because they won’t provide me underwear. I’ve had enough. This is unsanitary, it’s unclean, it’s bullshit.”
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Jessica Valenti of Feministing had a nice piece in The Guardian on Friday, mulling over the state of online misogyny in the wake of the Kathy Sierra incident. And of course she touches on Ann Althouse’s nasty attack on her for the unspeakable crime of having a figure.
If it’s any consolation, one side effect of that particular mud volley, surely unintended by Ms. Althouse, is that it won Feministing some new fans — including myself. Pretty much any time I see Ann Althouse’s name I think, “Hey, I should go read Feministing.” It’s sort of like the “Hi, Bob” game only with a smart and funny feminist blog instead of Suzanne Pleshette and butterscotch schnapps.
Here’s an older Feministing post on the “Quiverfull” movement, as profiled in The Nation. Warning: the top graphic on this post made me spit out my pu-erh tea. Good thing I have a back-up keyboard.
Bonus: the Althouse controversy framed in terms of the best angry kitty video ever.
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My old friend AKMA (from the Billy-Bragg email list back in the 90s) has a short but insightful post up about the etiquette of responding to a straight line when it’s offered. It reminds me of why I used to enjoy talking to him online so much. Go read it. The last time I exchanged emails with AKMA was probably a couple of years ago (and I’m pretty sure I was the one who dropped the conversational ball, thanks to an inbox that’s more like the swamp Man-Thing crawled out of than a place to communicate with friends) — but at least I’ve got AKMA on my blogroll now.
One of the things I like about his post is that it surfaces an interesting truth: Despite the competitive nature of comedy as an industry and many comedians as people, true comedy (at least the kind with more than one person on stage) depends more on cooperation than competition. And that’s true whether you’re the person offering the straight line, or the person who gets to supply the punch line.
Spend much time performing comedy on stage, especially in any ad-lib or improv format, and you quickly begin to admire the teammates who are best at extending an oar to a fellow player who’s floundering, or amplifying and adding to a colleague’s ideas in a way that enriches what’s taking place rather than stealing focus. And that may be a matter of offering the perfect set-up for someone else; it may be a matter of gracefully recognizing that set-up when it’s been handed to you; or it may be simply a matter of reacting to what someone else is doing in a way that magnifies the impact of it.
It’s the essential art of quiet heroism. And those who master it may not always be the audience’s favorite, but behind the scenes they’re recognized as the MVPs that everyone wants to work with.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
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Just because I love you, here’s a three-part chat show interview with John Barrowman, who plays Captain Jack (the swashbuckling bisexual time traveler from the 51st century) on both Doctor Who and its spinoff series, Torchwood. He talks about his recent knot-tying ceremony with his partner Scott, switches back and forth between his American and Scottish accents, and serves up some good backstage dish.
Host Charlotte Church has a lot of fun letting the mercurial Mr. Barrowman prove that he’s just as mischievous as the iconic character he plays, and even if you haven’t seen either show, I think you’ll find this interview highly entertaining. Official notice: It gets kind of blue at some points — OK, most points — and it’s probably not safe for work, so watch it at home or put on your headphones.
Here’s the first part:
… and here are links to the other two parts on YouTube:
Watch segment 2 to find out what David Tennant’s rather naughty backstage nickname is.
And in segment 3, you get to hear how John characterizes certain characteristics of Sean B. Hayes (aka Jack from Will & Grace).
Via AfterElton.com.
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Thanks to a branching garden path of Internet posts, I have just discovered the wonderful sentence “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” (which is really truly a grammatically correct sentence, although certainly not a graceful one) and spent about fifteen minutes learning how to decipher it. My head hurt for a minute or two there, but I got through it and I’m glad I didn’t let the sentence buffalo me the way people from Buffalo buffalo people who are also buffaloed by people from a certain city in New York.
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So, in the comments to my previous post on the pet food issue, I promised I’d provide a progress report on transitioning my little monsters over to the Newman’s Own organic cat food. And the short version is, so far, so good. (See this comment in particular for why I chose Newman’s Own over other natural/healthy brands — mainly it comes down to the food being based on organic and free-range chicken.)
The day after I made that post, I did indeed head over to the neighborhood pet shop here in Andersonville. But I hit a little bump in the road there: apparently the “Store Locator” listings on the Newman’s site are a wee bit out of date, because the nice lady at the pet store told me she stopped carrying Newman’s Own a couple of years ago. More distressingly, she told me that the reason she stopped carrying it was because people kept returning it, saying their cats wouldn’t eat it (although she said she did have some canine customers who liked it OK).
I took that with a grain of salt, though, because a lot of people don’t understand how slowly and gradually you need to transition finicky cats over from one food to another, especially if you’re going from a “regular” food to a prescription or “healthy” food. It’s a little like taking a kid who’s used to eating Big Macs and fries every day, and trying to convince him he’s just going to love brown rice with tofu and broccoli.
Dragon Lady (my previous feline companion) started to develop kidney disease in her last couple of years, and was put on prescription “kidney-friendly” food. The first couple of times I poured some into her bowl, she looked at me like I was crazy. Her expression said, and I quote it exactly, “You appear to have placed some wood shavings in my dish. What do you expect me to do with them? And when can I expect some actual food?”
(If you’re on the home page, click the “Read the rest” link for the rest of the story … )
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As a follow-up to my Roddy Frame post from a week or two back, here’s Roddy teaming up with Mick Jones from The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite to do something energetic, political, and way danceable: the ever-fabulous “Good Morning Britain,” from Aztec Camera’s album Stray, released as a single in 1990. And this is a song that absolutely evokes that year; you can almost see the Berlin Wall falling down when you hear it.
DJ Dave Roberts is a big fan of this one and has been known to play it at Planet Earth Chicago now and again. Caution: Listen to it three times in a row and it’ll be stuck in your head for a week. But you’ll love that, and it’ll make you a better person! I promise.
From the Tyne to where to the Thames does flow
My English brothers and sisters know
It’s not a case of where you go
It’s race and creed and colour.
From the police cell to the deep dark grave
On the underground’s just a stop away
Don’t be too black, don’t be too gay
Just get a little duller.
… The past is steeped in shame,
But tomorrow’s fair game,
For a life that’s fit for living
Good morning Britain.
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Bush thinks he has the right to “attach conditions” to the Supreme Court’s ruling on greenhouse gases.
Bush also said China and India must get on board the international effort to combat global warming.
“Unless there is an accord with China,” he said, “China will produce greenhouse gases that will offset anything we do in a brief period of time.”
[Senator] Boxer jumped on that remark.
“I find it offensive that the president is still using China as an excuse to do nothing when the U.S. has always been a leader in environmental protection,” she said.
Right on, Senator. The Bush administration might just as well argue that there’s no point in us bothering to have a Bill of Rights as long as China isn’t allowing its citizens to speak and assemble freely. Oh, wait — come to think of it, that’s probably already their position.
Pet food recall: the Boston Globe is asking whether some of the tainted wheat might have made its way into human food as well. According to the Globe, FDA says they “can’t completely rule out contamination of human food by the suspect wheat gluten.” Gluten-free diets are looking better and better. Via the Consumerist. Also see this DKos diary for much more info and perspective.
Bush’s new tactic: counting the days since he sent Congress his war funding request. Reason it won’t work: nobody will believe Bush can count to 57.
The Bush administration is placing a new gag rule on government scientists, who now must obtain prior approval in order to speak or write on any scientific topic “of official interest.”
David Mixner on why Pakistan “should scare the hell out of you.”
The Glass Closet: Out magazine unceremoniously hauls Anderson Cooper, Jodie Foster, and possibly a few others out of the closet.
Did you know that Hillary Clinton was on the board of Wal-Mart for six years?
China’s first TV show dedicated to gay issues premieres this Thursday.
Activist and blogger Josh Wolf, jailed for refusing to hand over a video he shot of WTO protests to federal prosecutors, has been released from prison.
Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood will get its US premiere on BBC America this fall. It’ll be part of their “Supernatural Saturday” lineup, which already includes Doctor Who and Life on Mars.
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Season 3 of Doctor Who is off to a great start, premiering on the BBC this past Saturday night to an appreciative 35.9% of the UK TV audience. Episode 1, “Smith and Jones,” served up rhino-headed aliens called The Judoon, a hospital on the moon, and of course the debut of the Doctor’s new companion, medical student Martha Jones.
Outpost Gallifrey News reports that a publication called The Express has accused Russell T. Davies of ruining every Saturday night in which there isn’t a Doctor Who episode, and that sounds about right.
Also, three stories from Season 2 of Doctor Who have been nominated for the 2007 Hugo Awards: “Army of Ghosts/Doomsday,” “The Girl in the Fireplace,” and “School Reunion.”
The episodes are nominated in the “Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form” category, which Doctor Who won last year for “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” two-parter.
Meanwhile, many PBS stations around the US are starting to air the Season 1 episodes with Christopher Eccleston. WTTW here in Chicago starts showing them April 22. The shows will air on Sundays at 10pm, Saturdays at 11pm. (Tip of the sonic screwdriver to Jim S.)
Finally, The Telegraph argues that “It’s now time to take Doctor Who seriously,” calling the show “an extraordinary study of loss”:
I apologise if it seems silly to be taking Doctor Who seriously. But Russell T Davies and his team of scriptwriters, it seems to me, have produced one of the best and most artful pieces of popular television in years. And what has made it so resonant is not the cast of silly monsters, the excellent jokes, the jolly special effects, and so forth — but its underlying deep melancholy.
Mr Davies has taken a rickety old 1970s science-fiction series, and — by applying a little psychological seriousness to the premise; by asking what it would mean to be able to travel through time, and to live more or less for ever — turned it into an extraordinary study of loss. Its deep theme is loneliness. Loneliness goes through the series like the lettering through a stick of rock.
Read the full piece here (warning — there are spoilers for both Season 1 and Season 2).
… As a side effect of reading that essay, I wound up ordering a copy of The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Anyone read it?
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Dozens of popular fish types, including grouper and barracuda, live near reefs. They accumulate the toxic chemical in their bodies from eating smaller fish that graze on the poisonous algae. When oceans are warmed by the greenhouse effect and fouled by toxic runoff, coral reefs are damaged and poison algae thrives, scientists say.
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Time for a little Monday music pick-me-up! This one needs no introduction: it’s the inimitable Mr. Tim Curry doing that thing he does. Nobody prances better.
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One more post in honor of April Fool’s day — here’s Greenpeace pulling a pretty good activist prank.
Kimberly-Clark, the makers of Kleenex, are responsible for clear-cutting irreplaceable old-growth forests in order to make their tissues. Meanwhile, there’s this Kleenex ad campaign where people are asked to sit on a blue sofa, artistically placed on a crowded city sidewalk, and shed a few tears about something or other into a Kleenex tissue.
So Greenpeace activists decided to show up and point out that Kimberly-Clark’s refusal to use recycled fibers is a real crying shame. Watch the video to see what happens.
It’s frustrating to walk down the paper goods aisle of my local Jewel and see not a single brand of recycled tissue available. Jewel’s store brand President’s Choice used to be available in a recycled version, but that disappeared from the shelves a while back. So these days I have to trek out to Whole Foods to get Seventh Generation.
Go here to learn more about the campaign and how you can help send a message to Kimberly-Clark to stop cutting down ancient forests and use recycled materials instead.
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Here’s a little smorgasbord of items I wanted to blog this past week, and didn’t get the chance to. Because unlike spaghetti, time to blog doesn’t grow on trees!
In what animal welfare advocates are describing as a “historic advance,†Burger King, the world’s second-largest hamburger chain, said this week that it would begin buying eggs and pork from suppliers that did not confine their animals in cages and crates.
… more news like that, please.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is maneuvering to fundamentally weaken the Endangered Species Act, its strategy laid out in an internal 117-page draft proposal obtained by Salon … “The proposed changes fundamentally gut the intent of the Endangered Species Act,” says Jan Hasselman, a Seattle attorney with Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, who helped Salon interpret the proposal.
The problem may be due to anabolic steroids used in the United States to fatten the cattle, Shanna Swan of the University of Rochester Medical Center reported in the journal Human Reproduction. It could also be due to pesticides and other environmental contaminants, she said.
In other words, it all goes right back to those two little words: factory farming.
For a limited period of 90 days, Apple said it will make the “Complete My Album” offer retroactive to users who purchased tracks dating back to the launch of the iTunes Store four years ago.
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What’s going on in Chicago this coming week? Almost too much for one imaginary tree-climbing pachyderm to blog. But here are a few highlights:
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and The Dollar Store ShowTags: