I Am DB

January 5, 2012

Eyes on Iowa

Filed under: Real Life,The Daily Show,TV — DB @ 6:37 pm

As we all know by now, the much hyped Iowa Republican caucus took place on Tuesday night, marking yet another milestone in the already tediously drawn out race for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination. Just the thought of having to endure another ten months of campaigning, pandering, toothless debates and vapid analysis before Election Day is enough to make the bliss of a frontal lobotomy worth considering. But as that would have the unfortunate side effect of preventing me from seeing Season 2 of Game of Thrones, it’s not a viable option. Instead, I look to Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher to ease my suffering.

Stewart earned his keep with last night’s coverage. He seemed possessed of an energy that he could barely contain, and if Emmys were awarded to the writing of individual segments, The Daily Show scribes would surely be in the running for this piece, which flaunted plenty of laughs as well as some impressive wordplay.

It’s really one continuous segment, but for some reason it’s been split in two:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

I assume that at some point later in his speech, Santorum clarified that the freedom he was speaking of doesn’t apply to gays and lesbians. Well, we’ll let him have his rare moment in the sun. He won’t be riding this wave too far. In fact, I’m not sure that when all is said and done this will be classifiable as a wave; it’s more like a splash in a bathtub.

If you just can’t get enough of Iowa caucus comedy, The Colbert Report‘s coverage was pretty great too. (Romney really is a robot, isn’t he? Sorry…that’s actually a disservice to how far robots have come.) Too bad Bill Maher’s season doesn’t begin until next week. I’m sure he too would have some choice comments.

On to New Hampshire…

December 13, 2011

Earworm Attack: Somebody That I Used to Know

Filed under: Music — DB @ 10:32 pm

Friends and family know me as a guy who’s always pretty aware of what’s happening in the world of movies. My annual and insufferable essays about the Oscars are evidence enough of that (only a month or so to go before all that starts up!). But in other areas, I’m quite uninformed or behind the times. Two realms in which this holds most true are music and technology. With technology, I’m usually five years or so behind the curve. Just recently I discovered this nifty little device called the – hang on, let me make sure I have this right – the iPod. The spelling looks wrong, but I guess that’s how they do it. I probably don’t need to explain to you what it is, but I was just floored. I had a great time filling it up with music…mostly the same music I’d already been listening to on compact disc for years. Because I don’t get exposed to a lot of new music either. I rarely listen to the radio, usually just playing CDs in the car, or using this new iPod thing. (“iPod”…that just looks wrong).

Disaster recently struck when the CD player in my car stopped working. I brought the car into the dealer and learned that it would cost between $300 and $400 to replace it. The car is over 11 years old and I’m not putting any more money into it, especially for something non-essential. So I’m now listening to a lot more radio. I basically shuffle between San Francisco’s two rock stations: KFOG and 107.7 The Bone. When one is playing a commercial or something that’s not floating my boat, I switch to the other. I thought it would drive me crazy not having my CD player, but the radio scenario has worked out pretty well. And one silver lining is that I’ve heard some good music that I might not have come across otherwise. Some of it is older stuff that I’d never heard, and some is new.

Now these are mainstream radio stations, so I’m hardly exploring the murky underworld of struggling indie bands. But I recently heard one track that made me feel like I was getting in on something at the ground floor even though I’m probably way behind the times. It seems to be gaining popularity, and has certainly burrowed its way into the depths of my frontal lobe. It’s called “Somebody That I Used to Know,” by Gotye. I’d never heard of this guy. Maybe some of you have. Maybe a lot of you have. Either way, I have to figure that if the song is catching on here, it’s getting play in other major markets as well. Gotye was born in Belgium and raised in Melbourne (the foreign credentials give him instant cred in the music biz, right?). If you want to learn more about him you can visit his Wikipedia page or his website; I’m not gonna do all the work here. Anyway, this song is off his new album, Making Mirrors. It’s available on iTunes (something else iRecently discovered after learning all about the iPod) and his website says it’s out now, though Amazon lists it as due for release on January 31. Luckily it has a video, which I’ve been playing incessantly due to complete inability to expunge the song from my head. This too shall pass, I know. In the meantime, take a look and give a listen. The video is cool and complements the song quite nicely.

One of the things I like about the song is the late, unexpected entrance of the female vocalist, Kimbra. By the time she shows up, you pretty much think you have a handle on the song; that it’s simply a guy’s account of a recent breakup. Then she comes in and makes us reassess what we’ve heard from him. The video finds a cool way to present this visually, not only by revealing her slowly, but by showing her enmeshed in all of his bullshit and then ultimately becoming free of it. Or am I just reading too deep into the pretty colors?

Can’t…stop…singing…this…

October 5, 2011

Hello, One Million Moms?

Filed under: Food,TV — DB @ 5:11 pm

How do you like this flavor?

x

x

Unlike Schweddy Balls (see previous post), this Arrested Development-themed flavor is, unfortunately, not real. It’s part of a pop culture-inspired line created by artist John DeFreest. He’s got some pretty cool offerings. Ben & Jerry, how about making some of these into reality? Surely you could have this flavor ready by the time Arrested Development‘s recently announced return comes to pass?

I Just Blue Myself. That’s friggin’ great.

September 24, 2011

Balls to the Walls

Filed under: Food,TV — DB @ 2:11 pm

The good folks at Ben & Jerry’s have had fun over the years looking to movies, music and television to find inspiration for new ice cream flavors. Cherry Garcia, Phish Food, Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream, Willie Nelson’s Country Peach Cobbler and Vermonty Python are among the prominent examples. Late Night Snack pays homage to Jimmy Fallon, while Imagine Whirled Peace is an ode à la mode to John Lennon. The latest addition to Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream-meets-pop-culture gallery is Schweddy Balls, inspired by the famous Saturday Night Live sketch starring Molly Shannon and Ana Gasteyer as the hosts of NPR’s Delicious Dish, and Alec Baldwin as their guest, Pete Schweddy.

If you will:

The new flavor was announced last week, and I gotta say, it sounds pretty tasty. It hasn’t reached my local supermarket, but I’ll be trying it out as soon as it does. That is, unless an uptight, conservative advocacy group called One Million Moms gets in the way. One Million Moms has taken offense to the title of this testicular particular flavor, and is calling for a boycott while requesting that Ben & Jerry’s stop production and distribution of future batches. One Million Moms, like its parent organization the American Family Association, is one of these hate-mongering religious associations that practices intolerance but hides behind words to which no decent person would think to object. Words like “family” and “moms.” The American Family Association is the same group that recently lashed out at ABC and Dancing with the Stars for featuring Chaz Bono on its new season. After all, how can good, wholesome American families watch the show now that abominable Bono is flaunting his transgender agenda?

In the case of Schweddy Balls, One Million Moms isn’t promoting bigotry, but merely good taste. They call the name “vulgar” and say that it’s not something they would want children asking for in the grocery store. The form letter they ask their members to send states that the flavor is “disrespectful to me personally, and to my family.” I’m not sure why this should be so, since nobody ever started a family without some schweddy balls in the mix. Anyway, the solution to their problem is simple: they don’t need to buy it. Ben & Jerry’s offers a wide variety of flavors that surely meet their standards of decency, and the younger kids probably don’t even know that such a flavor as Schweddy Balls exists. If they do know, it’s likely because they hear you harping on about it to your husband, or on the phone with one of the other 999,999 moms. The group does note that this is not the first time Ben & Jerry’s has upset them, citing 2009’s temporary re-branding of Chubby Hubby to Hubby Hubby, in celebration of Vermont’s legalization of gay marriage. “It seems that offending customers has become an annual tradition for Ben & Jerry’s,” their statement reads. I think it’s safe to say, however, that plenty of customers are not at all offended by these irreverent names. And frankly, I’m surprised these conservative groups would indulge in the first place in any product coming out of somewhere as liberal as Vermont.

I think those of us with a sense of humor and a belief in equality stand by Ben & Jerry’s, and can rest assured that the company will not bow to One Million Moms’ request. Yet I’d like to see them go even further. Schweddy Balls is currently set as a limited batch, planned to be available through the holiday season, with the possibility of sticking around longer. I hope Ben & Jerry’s will rebuff One Million Moms by making Schweddy Balls a permanent flavor, but I also think they should double-down on their commitment to scrotum-inspired ice cream flavors by producing a companion batch, influenced by South Park: Chef’s Salty Chocolate Balls. I leave it to the Flavor Gurus to attempt concockting concocting such a flavor, and getting it into testes testing for release into the marketplace as soon as possible.

In the meantime, I suggest the ladies of One Million Moms make their peace with Schweddy Balls by sucking it.

 

September 23, 2011

Elizabeth Warren: Can Congress Handle Her Competency?

Filed under: Real Life — DB @ 4:17 pm

The video clip below may be familiar to you already, having been making the rounds online over the last few days. It features Elizabeth Warren, currently running for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, talking to a group of supporters about one of the Republicans’ favorite bullshit buzzwords (or in this case, buzz-phrase): class warfare. Whenever President Obama or anyone else talks about higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans, the Republicans start throwing a hissyfit and claim that such a policy is harmful to (and here’s an even more popular Republican bullshit buzz-phrase) job creators. Yes, the wealthiest Americans are job creators. And what success they’ve had over the last few years, creating all those jobs that have kept America’s unemployment rate so high. Let’s just watch the video, before I stray too far…

Until this clip appeared on the web, I had no idea Warren was running for Congress. She is seeking Ted Kennedy’s former seat, currently held by Republican Scott Brown, who was elected after Kennedy’s death in 2009.

I’m familiar with Warren from her TV appearances on The Daily Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, Charlie Rose and from Michael Moore’s film, Capitalism: A Love Story. I’ve always enjoyed seeing her interviewed, not just because she’s a champion for common sense and consumer rights, but because she often comes off as just a bit daffy. Actually, I think it’s bemusement; she comes off as bemused that the steps to reforming our broken financial system are met with such stubborn resistance. She’s been in the thick of those reform efforts since 2008, when she was appointed to chair the Congressional Oversight Committee to monitor the distribution of the bank bailout money through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). In September 2010, she was appointed by Obama to help implement the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created a few months earlier when he signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. (For what it’s worth, Republicans in Congress were trying to strip the new bureau of its power before it was even up and running. Because apparently protecting consumers is a bad thing.)

I’m both pleased and distressed that she’s running for office. On one hand, we need more people like Warren in politics to help enact thoughtful legislation that will benefit all Americans, not just the ones in the highest income brackets. But of course, this sentiment assumes  that our government actually works and that politicians can accomplish anything meaningful. I don’t have a lot of faith in that possibility anymore, and I wonder if Warren couldn’t do more good outside of public office. I don’t come across too many members of Congress that aren’t, at best, posturing fools. And it seems that even when there is someone to put our faith in – someone who seems to have integrity and who vocally stands up for what’s right – they end up letting us down. I’m looking at you, Anthony Weiner.

I don’t see Elizabeth Warren getting caught up in any sex scandals, but I worry that her decency and pragmatism will be swallowed up by our ineffectual political system. Still, I suppose it’s a good thing to try to get more people like Warren into Congress if there’s ever going to be a chance of improving things.

Let’s hope the people of my original home state will do the right thing come November. And if they don’t, at least we know that Warren will continue to be a voice of reason and a champion of the middle class, wherever she is.

This is an April 2009 appearance Warren made on The Daily Show that has stuck out in my mind, partly for the clear explanation she offers (in the second clip) on how deregulation of the banking industry led to our national financial meltdown.

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Vodpod videos no longer available.

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