1) Looks like it, or a chipping wedge.

2) No, a spaniel chasing an orange tennis ball across the lawn.

(bonus q:) see above.

presidential putting
 

The key question is, how the hell is a well-bred WASP like him violate all rules of decorum by playing golf in a suit?

Then again, perhaps I shouldn't complain. Beats photos of Bill Clinton jogging in those little nylon shorts any day.

pj

reality nuts
 

He does. I have a special place in my heart for Oliver Stone and Moore and all others who attempt to pass off as non-fiction what they clearly know is fiction. Too many people watch it, figure that if they saw it on a screen it must be true ("well, they couldn't just LIE about it on camera, could they?!") and then forever are fucked up in their knowledge of history - especially when the lying is done to serve an agenda (which throws me about Stone, because JFK's only apparent agenda is "look at me - I'm Ollie Stone - I don't know jack about history"). I understand that movies aren't true, that cartoons don't really happen, and that Rob wasn't really screwing Laura, but I draw a line at a medium that says "come watch this documentary about real history" and then lies about the history.

Besides, I'm sure that Moore is misogynistic.

The Great News Swindle
 

Well their "Headline news" does a great job of reporting everything that's irrelevant: Madonna's new album; a new crappy movie; woman growing a huge watermelon; blah blah blah.

Define "Anything"
 

Bullshit. They traded secrecy to maintain access in Baghdad - nothign more. They easily could have picked up their reporters and walked. But by not reporting the truth all these years, they passively allowed the spread of lies and misinformation and perhaps helped to inflame anti-americanism throughout the world.

I'm shocked you would give them a pass.

not7yS

Ok, that makes a LITTLE more sense. I guess I've never seen an orange tennis ball, and the shadows are playing tricks with the size of the ball. And I'm only responding b/c this board is lacking in pointless responses today.

My Current Favorite Idiot
 

Why does this have any relevance whatsoever to Michael Moore's "creative liberty"?

not7y(huh?)S

Define "Anything"
 

Whaaaaaaa? Where exactly do you get the fill to make that mountain from what's an obvious molehill? CNN did what all press orgs do - they buried a few stories to get better access later. I give them a pass for the same reason I give Arnett a pass - If you don't play ball, you'll never get to the real meat of what;s going on. The stories CNN buried were not huge stories the burying of which perpetuated anti-Ameircanism - they were, as I recall, salacious pieces about outrageous shit the Iraqi secret police were doing. How does not reporting about a secret police threat to murder a Jordanian govt official help to foment anti-Americanism? You're painting on a small canvas with a roller here.

I'll tell you what. You admit Fox News is a shitbag network and I'll retract CNN's "pass." But when the bar is so set so goddamn low by the likes of Fox, I find it hard to assail CNN for anything.

That is definitely a putter (don't recall ever seeing a pitching wedge with that kind of jog just above the club head, though admittedly my golf is more than a bit rusty). But hey--at least he's keeping his head down.

tm

My Current Favorite Idiot
 

Since we were discussing idiots, I figured I'd take license to post a gripe about another ideological imbecile like Moore.

We need to retain consistency, lest people think the left is the sole bastion of idiots.

Don't think I'm a leftie. I'm not - I have equal contempt for both sides.

reality nuts
 

So where the hell did Richie come from, Mr. Smarty-Pants? The stork dropped him off at 148 Bonnie Meadow Road?

Seriously, if you have ANY INFORMATION WHATSOEVER on Laura Petrie's sexual proclivities, spill it. I've had the hots for her since 1961, which is ten years before I was born --- she's that hot. Did she ever dump that gangly everyman loser? 'Cause I'd like to check out what's inside of those capris, if you know what I'm sayin'.

reality nuts
 

Wait. Does this mean you actually admit to seeing one of these movies?

---> :D ;) :D <---

TM

Define "Anything"
 

Problem is, the stories they buried WERE the real meat - what ife was like in Iraq, and what Saddam did to his people routinely. What they buried was the expose to what many people did not accept as true until much later, thanks to CNN's whitewash.

The Great News Swindle
 

I had a meeting on Thursday with my company's Director of Media Relations. He was explaining to me that he's been in this business for 17 years, and in the last three, he's seen a major shift in pretty much every aspect of media. Reporters, print and television, require stories to be pre-packaged these days. The television and radio people no longer have producers and the paper people are also cutting down on staff. So pretty much in order for a story to be run, the press needs to get the release and have all the parties assembled and ready for interviews. In a town like mine, where there's only one daily newspaper in town, the publicists run the way media is handled.

Nina Simone, R.I.P.
 

I think that I'm going to go home tonight and have a drink while listenting to Sinner Man. I've loved Nina Simone for years, and I'm sad I never made it to France to see her perform live.

reality nuts
 

You mean, publicly admit?

Of course not.

Made the mistake of seeing JFK with some people who knew little of the history. They were dumbfounded at how I just kept getting more and more riled as the movie wore on. ("That never happened! . . . " "He wasn't even in the damn government then. . . .!!??" "No, no, no, no, that's just WRONG!!. . . . .")

I wish we had had one of those tennis balls this weekend. The Lab ruined a perfectly good (and close) game of bocce when he "retrieved" on of the yellow balls and accidently dropped it in the lake.

Goodness and Karma
 

GOODNESS:
Last Friday I got trashed and lost my wallet. As anyone who has ever had this happen can attest, this sucks. A few minutes ago, my cabbie called to say he would be dropping my wallet off, along with the money that was in it, in forty-five minutes.

KARMA:
I have been talking with a number of partners this afternoon, and have been gesturing wildly to make my points more effective and persuasive. I just walked down the hall to tell a fellow associate about my good luck with the cab driver. She was very pleased for me, and then motioned for me to look down. The second button on my shirt was unbuttoned, giving everyone a nice shot of my bra and what it is intended to keep supported and under control. Cripes. I wonder how long it has been like that.

Know the Toe
 

Someone was telling me about www.cameltoe.com. I've never visited the site (nor will I at work), but apparently there are hats and t-shirts on sale there with their signature "Know The Toe" slogan.

I'm just passing this along for entertainment purposes...I hope no one is offended...I thought the slogan was...well...hilarious.

Goodness and Karma
 

At what point in the day did you start winning your arguments?

The Great News Swindle
 

The Post sucked, but the Chonicle is a joke - do they have any of their own reporters or do they just cut and paste little bits of other papers' articles and hope no one notices? Oh, and when they actually venture to report something, I like how they just change peoples' quotes at will - Mr. Lex has been misquoted several times - scary what they might do with important-people quotes. When the Enron and other local stories are coming from other news services, you know the end is near.

-TL

http://www.pennracquet.com/sites/use...tbpinkball.jpg

You can have some, and support breast cancer research at the same time!

The Great News Swindle
 

My favorite indication on how very bad the Chronicle is was during the anit-trust trial in San Francisco two years ago. The Hearst people were trying to buy the San Francisco Chronicle and also run the Examiner. The Hearst people were testifying about the Houston Chronicle and the following exchange took place:


Edited because eye cannot spell.

Bocce rocks
 

I am an unabashed fan of bocce and the entire family of bocce-sports, of which curling is probably the most popular, but which also includes lawn-bowling and the little known "bocce frisbee."

The biggest problem with bocce frisbee, by the way, is that if played on grass, it's damn hard (but not impossible) to dioslodge a well placed frisbee.

str8

P.S. The Hollywood Reporter called FooFighters and Transplants a "Near-perfect concert." Go see them when they come to your town.

Bocce rocks
 

When we discovered that bocce was best played with a couple of pitchers of sangria and a lot of arguing, we realized that it was the perfect game for the family. There were 30 of us involved in the game this time, and the 1 1/2 year old's random movement of the balls added an extra level of uncertainty to the game. She'd run on the field, pick up a ball, put it down again when a half dozen adults started motioning to her and waving their arms. Then everyone'd have to look and see how much the game had changed before and after her involvement. At one point we were using a plastic easter egg as the pallino, because she'd run off with the orange pallino we'd been using. Then the lab showed up, retrieved about seven different throws, hijacked one of the yellow balls, and that was the end of the game. We are hopeful that we can con him into retrieving it from the lake.

reality nuts
 

Speaking of "documentaries," I saw "American Movie" this weekend. Very funny. Reminds me of people where I grew up.

Like Atticus, I appear to be a few years out of date (although I finally figured out what the kids have been talking about with this Tivo gadget and set it up last weekend).

Bocce rocks
 

Damn. I didn't even know that you USED horses in bocce ball.

Bocce rocks
 

You can see why a plastic easter egg was a poor substitute, then.

American Movie
 

Alright, the subject of that film was a nut. But, of the few scenes they showed of his movie, do you doubt that he would actually be a pretty good director/producer if given a chance? I thought it was going to be complete crap, but it ended up being quite good, given the limited resources and talent he had on hand. He was surprisingly thorough. What'd you think?

TM

Define "Anything"
 

Are you really saying that because CNN -- in particular -- did not run everything it had on how Saddam and his regime terrorized, tortured, and killed his people over the last decade or so, that this led the rest of the world to doubt that he was doing these things?

I think that:

1. With the exception of the French, Russians, and Germans, very few people didn't know or suspect that Saddam et al was really that bad. (And even these three knew, but chose to ignore it for reasons discussed ad nauseum on the Politics bd).

2. Your bar for Western news organizations is rather high. When I'm told that at least one CNN Baghdad reporter was tortured because of CNN reporting, and that the rest were threatened to be killed if they didn't bury stories, I'm willing to cut them a little slack.

3. To those who said they should've simply pulled out of Iraq, I'm not sure what the recommended alternative really is. Fine -- you refuse to compromise your principles, you pull out every last reporter in the country, and you make a big splash about how Saddam threatened to kill your news division and everyone in it.

Then what? Keeping these principles becomes more more difficult when you've got nothing to report because you have no assets there.

Gattigap

Stuff I got at Wherehouse Music
 

Maybe I should start out with stuff I considered, but didn't get, at the very picked-through Ventura Blvd. Wherehouse Music 70% off "GoingOut Of Business" sale:

Rhett Miller's latest (cause I already bought it, full price, alas)
Flickerstick (from the greatest reality TV show of all time, Bands on the Run)
'N Sync
Lots of 98 Degrees
Britney's latest

What I did get:

Three Old 97s discs
Spinal Tap
Ash, Free All Angels
St. Lunatics, Free City
Our Lady Peace, Clubsy
The Vines, Get Free Import
Hootie, Cracked Rear View, and why not
Natalie Merchant, Motherland
Dread Zeppelin. Ugh (listened to it once, never again).

It was really picked through. I mean really. Really really.

str(really)8

American Movie
 

I think "Coven" actually premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and got butchered.

But as for your question, I agree he was a nut, but surprisingly complex and sharp and not some random raving nut. I agree that he really thought things out and had a real vision of what he wanted to do. Apparently he is working on a new movie called "scare me", so I suppose if that one makes it anywhere it will show that he is not just a novelty act.
http://www.americanmovie.com/ - links to diary discussing new film

American Movie
 

I bought that DVD for my SO for Christmas (Wisconsin connection there). We really enjoyed the part of it we have watched, but we didn't make it to the end yet. He does appear to be a nut. I like all the scenes where he makes his mom go out and be an extra, etc. Oh and the money schemes with his uncle. I haven't watched Coven yet.

n(I knew many fellows in my high school who probably ended up just like his unmotivated best friend)cs

EO
 

Tony and Duncan are looking a bit flat...

Of course, but for the Starbury miracle this weekend, this series would look very different (yeah, Thurgreed, it would be different...).

Define "Anything"
 

No. I'm saying that, after forty-some years of hearing from the press about how they occupy this sacrosanct position in our Constitutionally-guided lives, I think CNN had a duty to not simply decide that otherwise majorly-news-worthy stories would be supressed by them simply for their own profit. If they claim the mantle of the Fifth Estate, they damned well better not unilaterally decide, not that I shouldn't know about something, but that they would profit more by keeping their knowledge from me. If they want constitutional protection, they need to accept the good and the bad of the role. Because, that's not what CNN did - they didn't play the role - every day that they presented the news, they were implicitly telling us that they were sharing with us everything important that they knew. Now, of course, we know better. CNN would look at important stories that had a direct bearing on our international relations, and decide that it would do better, financially, if it kept that knowledge from us.

Thus, from this point on, I will be marginally less willing to believe that the american press is giving me the whole story. After all, they might have some stock riding on a story somewhere, making it less advantageous for them to inform me.

EO
 

I am pleased with the play of Speedy Claxton (my current favorite name in hoops) and Steven Jackson.

But, it is only half-time, so we will have to see how it goes.

Even(it's playoff time!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)Odds

Define "Anything"
 

Bilmore - Noam Chomsky's SP

(On another note - Damn Leafs)

Inconceivable!!
 

Is it just me or does the blad guy in the middle of look just like the little, fast-talking guy from The Princess Bride?

Inconceivable!!
 

Um, I thought that was the whole point? I also thought it was pretty clear that both Mr. Shawn and the text of the sign had been photoshopped in, but I'm open to correction on that one (he's not even the one holding that sign, either).

tm

reality nuts
 

So he is kind of like Rush Limbaugh then??

Ad(no, I swear, Vince was murdered...)der