White House Humor?

One of my favorite TV shows is the West Wing. Aaron Sorkin's style definitely works the best when the things people are talking about actually are lofty.

However, one thing I always wondered about was whether people in the White House actually crack jokes with one another. I've only ever worked in the entertainment industry. I've never had a job that necessitates any level of seriousness and I imagine the White House to be the opposite kind of environment. Yet I've worked with people in Hollywood that take themselves excessively seriously and the West Wing, a very serious show about politics, features a group of people that are incessantly glib and sarcastic.

Its also always a big deal when a politician -- especially a president -- not only makes a joke but is actually funny. Bush apparently cracked jokes all the time. It worked out well in his approval rating. Both Obama and McCain became internet sensations when the delivered hilarious speeches at the Alfred E Smith dinner:





I know I was surprised that these guys actually had timing. In reality though, they are professional public speakers. It follows that timing comes in that package, right?

Yet when it comes to news, some of the most honest moments come from Jon Stewart or Colbert. And when it comes to issues you'll get brutal truth from Chris Rock or, up until recently, George Carlin. In order to find humor in life, it seems you need to deconstruct things in a way that also leads to truth.

So, I guess my point is that I think we can all do with a little more banter on Capital Hill. What this has to with anything I'm not sure other than its 12:20 AM and its on my mind.

Taken AKA Liam Neeson Kicks Serious Ass

Taken is the rare movie that, with few exceptions, completely knows its place and what it was trying to accomplish. Namely, Liam Neeson's unabashed non-stop Schmorgas board of justified kick-assery, which was completely satisfying and, might I add, delicious.

The other great part about the movie is how easy it is to sum up: Liam Neeson's daughter is kidnapped and then he goes ape shit and kills everyone.

Oh, you want more details even though you've probably seen the movie if you're reading this? OK: Liam's 17 year old daughter begs him for permission to travel to Europe with her friend. Although paranoid, Liam agrees and then, of course, the daughter is immediately kidnapped by crazy Albanians that pick off hot naive young girls traveling alone, then get them addicted to drugs and sell them as sex slaves. Liam Neeson, who apparently had some crazy government job where he was trained to not only be able to kill people basically just by looking at them, but also to be so incredibly confident in this ability that he never feels the need to carry a gun, goes to get her back. Needless to say, Liam goes to town on all the Albanians and absolutely destroys them trying to get his daughter back.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!

He gets her back. And then there's a terrible cheesy ending tag that makes you want to punch whatever producer/director/writer argued to leave that shit in.

Overall, if you don't think to much about it, the movie was awesome. Liam Neeson's character is given the best justification ever to go on a insanely violent rampage on anyone's face who tries to prevent him from getting to his daughter. If anyone seems to die without feeling a great deal of pain, its disappointing. Maybe it's my future paternal instinct, but Neeson could of literally started castrating the bad guys and then cut off their limbs and fed them to sharks with rabies and I would have been 100% behind it. It doesn't nearly go that far but he does some awesome bad ass shit and it's awesome. When I saw it, there were about 4 times when some particularly gnarly badassery on Neeson's part was rewarded with a round of applause from the audience

If you do, however, think about it, you realize that the movie plays into a pretty ignorant xenophobia. Neeson's daughter is taken in Paris by crazy Albanians who the French apparently can't control and then sold to a Sheik. Translation: the French are weak. Eastern Europeans are evil. Arabs are disgusting. On the other hand, Americans are either completely ignorant and naive, or completely paranoid. I guess some stereotypes are based in truth. The movie also doesn't really delve to deeply in any kind of helpful way into the very VERY real issue of human trafficking (for more info on that go here, here or here).

Overall, the action was really entertaining and well put together, the pacing was great, the writing was fine, but I think it was Liam Neeson that really elevated the movie beyond the sort of predictable action flick that it really is at the core. An action star wouldn't have quite sold the absolute torture that Neeson's character felt every second his daughter wasn't safe.

Love to hear anyone else's thoughts!

Live Blogging the Superbowl: probably a terrible idea

Note: I know NOTHING about football! And I have no preference for a team to win going into the game.


3:30 kickoff! Someone is telling me the yellow pants team is made of steel

3:36: JPorterhouse says there was a touchdown! The guy who throws the ball ran into the zone at the end. There is an air of celebration

3:38 Coach's challenge! Bmoney says the rule is "it has to break the plane of the thing". That sounds like geometry to me.

3:41: Holy shit! The touch down just got CANCELLED! Thats ridiculous.

BTW Loved the Jason Statham audi commercial. Best so far!

3:46: All the red guys just introduced themselves and now they have the ball. JPorterhouse is concerned that pointing out that Pittsburgh has a superior defense is cliched because everyone knows that. I'm starting to get sick of JPorterhouse

3:54 that was a heck of a defensive play! JPorterhouse was right!

The rest of the red guys are introducing themselves. They all like they could kick my ass in less than 5 seconds

3:57 Rothlesburger just scrambled some eggs all over the cardinals. You can't tackle this guy! Best play so far.

4:01 Was that the fastest first quarter ever in a Superbowl?

Commecrials:
Got to admit the Fast and Furious movie looks kind of awesome!
I want car monkeys. Actually I want any kind of monkey.

4:05: JPorterhouse is concerned there's been no fleaflickers or laterals. I dont know what he's talking about. I think those might be medical terms.

Just saw a Land of the Lost ad. Eveyrone thinks it looks dumb like Journey 3D but i can't wait. I love will ferrell. I would dare to say romantically.

4:08 TD Steelers!! They're running away with it. This game is pretty much over really. Maybe i'll take a nap. Time for beer #2 at the very least!

4:16 I'm hearing that Kurt Warner has some kind of inspiring story. Apparently he used to bag groceries and then turned pro. So I guess there's still hope for me. Cardinals driving down the field right now. I think i'm going to root for them.

4:20 HUGE pass from warner. Boldin, i'm told, is the guy that caught the ball. Huge play. clearly my endorsement is paying off.

4:21 TOUCHDOWN CARDINALS there is no way this is not because of me. Cardinals fans i want 10% of all the money you win. Post comments and i'll get in touch with you with an address of where to send check. kthx

4:23 Does anyone actually watch Chuck?

4:30 Breaston with the awesome name and punt return. My cardinals are proving themselves right now.

DJ is regaling us of stories of when he was on the football team at Florida State. He doesn't jut have 1 ring. He's got four.

4:34 3rd and 22 Cardinals totally got this.

DJ played with Darnell Dockett at Florida St and says he's a jerk. He's the defensive line for the cardinals. He punched someone in the face at their apartment complex. I just hope he can channel that energy on the field.

4:41 The tip and the interception from my beloved Cardinals. They're getting into the groove now. Thats the first time i've ever seen a tip get recovered by the defense in all of the more than 1 dozen football games i've watched.

4:48 I'm going on record declaring this the hairiest superbowl in history. Troy Polamalu , Larry Fitzgerald, Tim Hightower. Plus its not illegal to tackle by the hair. At least thats the consensus here.

4:53 Times have become dark for cardinal fans. The sun has receded. The future looks bleak. But that interception was AWESOME to watch if you dont actually care about either team.

5:07 I was literally holding a chip with guacamole on it about to put it in my mouth when Bruce Springsteen told me to put it down. I guess he's the boss.

Also wishing I had some of Claude's bacon wrapped chicken nuggets.

THe amount of rock star moves Springsteen just pulled blew my mind. The slide. The windmill. The guitar swing around the neck. Epic win.

5:32 LETS GO CARDINALS!!!! Beer #4. Welcome to my stomach

5:45 just found the GI JOE trailer they apparently aired in the first quarter. Don't know how i missed it!

5:53 Yikes. Personal foul from AZ defense just screwed over the time. Watching the replay though it looks like it was completely unintentional. Think this call is total BS. I'm going to write numerous letters to the NFL commissioner expressing my dissatisfaction.

5:57 No harm no foul. The penalty just ended up being a time waster. I disagree with JPorterhouse thought that it was part of the Cardinals defensive strategy.

6:15 El Rausch think the coach for the Steelers looks like Omar Epps. I'm inclined to agree. Wondering whether Warner can pull it together and make it a game again. Seems doubtful. Especially since BreastMan just got pummeled.

6:26 Fitzgerald is the man with the big catch in the end zone. Now there is one mission. Prevent the steelers from winning.

6:28 Love Alec Baldwin. Love hulu. They both give me a boner. WHAT!???

6:31 Roethlisburger: your ass just got saaaaaaaaacked

6:38 Kurt Warner isn't just driving down the field. He's driving away with my heart.

6:40 Kurt! What are you doing? I gave you my heart and you just pulled down your pants and pooped all over it. THATS NOT RIGHT, KURT!!! ITS NOT RIGHT! I dont. Even. Know. What. To feel.

6:48 Holy shit. HOLY SHIT! THE CARDS! KURT WARNER! LARRY FITZGERALD! EPIC! AMAZING! And to think, before tonight's game, I'd never watched Arizona play before. Ha. This has been quite the exciting superbowl.

6:59: this shit is a freakin nailbiter. You can't slip on defense when the whole game is at stake.

7:01 Oh well. Thats game. If Roeth can get the ball past three Cardinals he deserves it. Great game though. Unless some crazy bullshit gets pulled right now.

7:11 Game over man. Game over. This is why I don't get into sports. I invested my heart into the Cardinals all its brought me is pain.

Pay to Play (the Rod Blagojevich song)

My buddy DrunkJesse came up with this song the other day. I think its hilarious, relevant and worth watching.

Palate Food and Wine review = yum!

Last night I went out with the girlfriend to a newish spot I've been wanting to try for a while: Palate Food and Wine in Glendale. I heard some great things about this place but was a little skeptical because it was in Glendale. For those of you unfamiliar with Glendale--think of it as every generic suburb rolled into one. In other words, I wouldn't be surprised if the second best restaurant in Glendale was the Oliver Garden.

However, in the most polite and respectful way possible, Palate ended up slapping me across the face, calling me a d-bag and sending a clear message that Glendale should be taken seriously. Ok, the place was the only business on its street that didn't sell cars, but it had some amazing food. Credit goes to chefs Octavio Becerra and Gary Menes.

We started with a bottle of wine and I decided to go with Château de la Liquière Faugères Vieilles Vignes 2007 because I was completely overwhelmed by the wine list and it said this one was organic and I thought that would be cool. It was also from the Rhone region and so I thought it might have some cabernet sauvingon in it. We were sharing the table with a couple of dudes who seemed to be working their way through the entire menu and it turned out one of them was a sommelier and he very politely pointed out that Rhone wines are, in fact, granache and syrah...I think...and that organic wine often tastes like dirt. Score. Our wine came and it was pretty good, not too dirt-like and much cheaper than the $150 dollar bottle the Sommelier was drinking. So suck on that. I should also quickly mention that all the wines offered are for sale at a shop thats part of the restaurant complex.

Next came the food. We started with the fall caponata. A caponata is, according to wikipedia, "a Sicilian augergine dish, a cooked vegetable salad made from chopped fried aubergine and celery seasoned with sweetened vinegar, and capers in a sweet sour sauce". It was tasty and made up of a lot of vegetables that I woudn't normally eat but that were actually pretty yummy and the flavors all blended together nicely. This dish also clued me into what I believe is the theme of Palate, at least for me, which is balance. Especially in terms of flavor, but I think both sides of the restaurant probably weighed about the same too.

Note: my plan was to refer to the online menu as I write this and I just discovered that its not the same as the one we had last night. So bear with me as the rest of the dishes I will be forced to describe from memory. We had a potato and mushroom soup that was unfairly tasty. I could eat it every day: creamy, savory and the mushrooms burst in your mouth with an earthy saltiness. The best part was the presentation: a bowl was placed on the table with a small portion of mushrooms. The waiter was literally, like "yo there's your soup". We were like "uh...... what?" and he was like "its soup" and then sort of started giggling. I looked at my girl and I think both shared the same thought: "this soup is bullshit". Then the waiter cracked up and pulled a caraffe of soup from like out his ass and poured it on the mushrooms. We all shared a big laugh. And then devoured the soup.

After the soup came the rest of the meal: gnocchi with sugar snap peas and pork cheek, winter vegetables wrapped in parchment and pork belly with blood oranges. The highlight for both of us was the gnocchi. Both the pork cheek and the gnocchi melted in your mouth and the saltiness of the pork was perfectly balanced by the sweetness of the snap peas. Nothing was overwhelming and the sauce was so delicious I asked for more bread to sop it up. The vegetables were fine, nothing to write home about, but very fresh and well cooked. The best part about those was that they came sealed up in a parchment pouch that had to be cut open, which our waiter also loved doing. My gf was feeling full when we got to the Pork Belly but I loved it. Once again the saltiness of the park had a perfect compliment in the sweetness and tartness of the blood orange. Well done. Delicious. Bravo. I wanted to try and give the chef a handjob but thought better of it.

After the meal, we got some apple tart which was also awesome and tasted like, well, really awesome apple tart. Also our waiter, who was pretentious and French but awesomely so, gave us a healthy free pour of some fancy dessert wine form 1989 since we had been getting slow service because our tablemates were being fawned over due to their sommelier status. The 89 wine blew my mind. Sweet, nutty, balanced. Delicioius.

This was one of the wines our sommeliar tablemate had been drinking and he said it was pretty special. We ended up chatting with him and his friends through a lot of the meal. They were super friendly and helped contribute to a great atmosphere.

A fantastic meal overall made even better when our tablemates called Charlie Day from Its Always Sunny in Philadlephia over to our table. He had been sitting behind us all night and I had been content to whisper loudly to my girlfriend "Hey! Hey! Its Charlie Day! Right behind us! And that girl who plays the girl he likes on the show! Right THERE! Behind you! Should I talk to him? I'm gonna. No thats tacky. Should I?" At any rate, before I got punched in the face, Charlie was over by our table and we gave him a shy "we love your show" and he started talking about how he might include a flashback un the upcoming season giving insight into how his character become such a huge asstard. More awesomeness.

So in summation. Palate has awesome food. Try a non organic wine. Try and sit next to an awesome down to earth sommelier dude. Charlie Day is the man.

Goat Crime Spree - Nigeria

A goat was arrested for a crime in Nigeria. Here is the actual text of the reuters article:

LAGOS (Reuters) - Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

"The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat," Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

"We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat," he said.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw.

And now, here is a brief imagining of a scene that would occur after I'm arrested for a crime spree in Nigeria.

POLICE: You are under arrest for robbing all the banks in Nigeria.

MAX: Excuse me?

POLICE: We have numerous witnesses placing you at all the robberies along with survellience footage and fingerprints. You're also still holding the gun you used to hold people up.

MAX: Oh, no its just a misunderstanding.

POLICE: Go on...

MAX: See it wasn't really me doing the crimes. I was possessed.

POLICE: Ooooooh ok. I see the misunderstanding.

MAX: Ok terrific.

POLICE: Do you happen to know who possessed you?

MAX: It was this guy Kevin. But he turned himself into a gerbil so....

POLICE: A gerbil? Thats like a hamster?

MAX: Yeah, i think they're like exactly the same. I don't know the difference actually.

POLICE: I think a gerbil might be bigger. On average.

MAX: That makes sense I guess. Should I google it? I can google it on my phone - I switched to international service before coming here.

POLICE: It doesn't matter. I know what you mean. We're in a bad service spot anyway.

MAX: Ok, well he turned into like a tan gerbil hamster thing and scampered away.

POLICE: Ok.

MAX: Yeah.

POLICE: Well thanks for your help.

MAX: No prob. I'm gonna just head out now.

POLICE: Oh! Can we get the money back?

MAX: The money?

POLICE: From the robberies...?

MAX: Oh yeah, I spent it already. I was still possessed when I spent it so...

POLICE: Gotcha. Sucks.

MAX: Yeah.....sucks.

POLICE: Well have a good one.

MAX: Thanks. Here you can have this gun. They won't let me take it on the plane anyway.

Max leaves. Later in the day a gerbil is arrested and executed.

Great Humanist Ad

Love this one page ad from the Washington Post:

24 Hours at Sundance

My company is doing a cool new experimental entertainment concept on the web: www.24hoursatsundance.com hosted by Ashton Kutcher and Kevin Rose (founder of digg.com). Its live right now so you should check it out!

Its a reality competition that uses qik -- a company that created software for phones that allows them to stream live video directly to the web.

Basically there are 4 internet mavens running around the Sundance Film Festival and they're given absurd tasks by Ashton and Kevin over the course of 24 hours. They're awarded points based on how well the complete the tasks and tomorrow morning one of them will be crowned the winner!

The concept is really unique and forward thinking (not to toot my companies own horn). I'd love to hear thoughts on what people think about it! Please be patient with the live video feeds as they can be a little choppy. Remember this is a new technology and its the first time we're doing this!