The Yin Blog

Britney Spears joins "The X-Factor" . . . (snooze)

I wasn't all that impressed with the first season of "The X-Factor"; Simon Cowell stopped giving his harsh but accurate critiques, and the other judges were pretty lame -- except for L.A. Reid, who was the closest thing to the "American Idol"-version of Simon.

Then, the two lamest judges, Nicole Scherzinger and Paula Abdul, were fired in the offseason, and now it's official: Britney Spears is replacing them. I'm not sure this is an improvement, and I think I may be done with "The X-Factor."

Note, however, that if Spears were to replace Christina Aguilera on "The Voice," that would be a definite improvement! Sheesh!

You know, if NBC really wanted ratings, maybe it should match up Christina Aguilera against current "Celebrity Apprentice" contestant Aubrey O'Day to see who has the colossally biggest me-me-me-me ego.

Ashley Judd and running

Last night, I caught part of the 2002 movie "High Crimes," starring Ashley Judd, and there was a scene where she was running for exercise -- and subsequently stalked by a car; good thing she can run! Then I remembered that there were two scenes in the pilot episode of Judd's new (and probably soon-to-be-canceled) TV series "Missing" where she's running for exercise. I wonder if this is an acting signature for her?

(I don't recall her running for sport in her two guest stints as Ensign Robin Lefler on "Star Trek: The Next Generation," though, so perhaps it's a more recent thing.)

 

Bizarre Yahoo! list of 100 funniest movies

I'm admittedly not the biggest expert on comedy movies, since my tastes run more toward sci-fi or present day action thrillers, but I found it strange that this Yahoo! list of 100 funniest comedies includes neither "Ruthless People" nor "The Naked Gun."

I mean, I've seen a surprising number of movies that are on the list, and these are all (in my view) nowhere near as funny as those two:

"Coming to America" (okay but not one of Eddie Murphy's best)

"Groundhog Day" (good movie, but sappy ending)

"The Jerk"

"M*A*S*H"

"The Player" (weird and kind of a boring book)

"Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" (funny for a few minutes)

"There's Something About Mary" (funny but more about shock value)

"When Harry Met Sally"

***

"Ruthless People" is really funny. Danny DeVito and Bette Midler are perfect in it, and Judge Reinhold and Helen Slater are appropriately restrained. And "The Naked Gun" . . . really, that's not on the list? Just watch Leslie Nielsen "umpire" the Dodgers game and see if you can resist laughing. Heck, I still find OJ Simpson hilarious in this movie! 

The ACA "Under Siege"

While reading various reactions to last week's arguments in the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, in particular, criticisms of the performance by Solicitor General Verilli (and compliments toward Paul Clement), I was strangely reminded of the best Steven Seagal movie, which is Under Siege (aka "Die Hard on a Battleship"). In it, Seagal played Casey Ryback, ex-SEAL and current head cook on a soon to be decommissioned U.S. battleship that gets taken over by a bunch of terrorists led by Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey. Jones and Busey and their henchmen have managed to capture and lock up just about every sailor on the ship, except for Seagal and a few others who hid. Seagal then wages an insurgency to take back control of the ship.

At one point, seeing the latest mayhem that Seagal has inflicted (dead terrorists, etc.), Jones turns to a henchman played by Colm Meaney (aka Chief O'Brien on ST:TNG) and says, "Daumer, Daumer, Daumer, why didn't you hire this person? I don't know what his price would have been, but it would have been worth it!"

(start at 0:22 in the video clip)

You have to wonder if team Obama felt the same way after the oral arguments. . . . I say this not as a critic of Verilli; although it's certainly possible to get a plum federal appointment without much actual qualifications as political payback, I highly doubt that's true about the SG. This is more of a reflection of how brilliant Clement is universally acknowledged to be as a Supreme Court advocate.

Anyway, you have to wonder if team Obama was thinking, if only we had Clement on our side! 

Of course, one suspects that Clement personally believes himself to have the better argument on the Commerce Clause issue. But when we had Clement here at Lewis & Clark as our Kennedy Speaker last fall, he did a lunch time presentation for our students, and one of the (many) interesting things he said was that there have been occasions when he wanted to argue one side of a case, but it was the other side that approached him for his services. He's the ultimate lawyers' lawyer in that sense -- he argues the client's cause.

So what if the Obama Administration had looked ahead to this day of reckoning before the Supreme Court, and thought, that's who we want arguing our case? Would the President have ever been willing to consider appointing Clement as the Solicitor General?

Well, for most lawyers who are Supreme Court wonks, it would be incredibly hard to turn down an offer of being the primary advocate for the United States, the so-called Tenth Justice. But since Clement has already had that experience, having served as President Bush's SG from 2004 to 2008, it would probably hold less appeal for him than for most others. And the prospect of contacting an opposition party member with such a plum prospect, only to be turned down, would no doubt be embarrassing for any administration, so I don't really think that Obama would have been willing to try even if he would've wanted Clement on his team.

Still, can you imagine, after last week's arguments, President Obama saying, "David [Axelrod], David, David, why didn't you hire Clement before the oral argument? I don't know what his price would've been, but it would've been worth it!"

Mitt Romney and Lindsay Brigman's death-defying solution from "The Abyss"

Chances are, Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee for President. A lot of things would have to go right for any of his opponents, but it's certainly not impossible.

Still, Romney is benefitting from having multiple opponents fighting for a share of the social conservative vote. He's better off having Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrinch in the race still (well, maybe not Gingrinch if the latter is going to go kamikaze on Romney), rather than facing only one of the three, because then, all the social conservative vote will go to that one remaining candidate.

Romney's situation kind of reminds me of the (incredibly well-filmed) scene in James Cameron's "The Abyss," where Ed Harris' and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's characters are trapped in a damaged submersible that's filling up with freezing water. Harris is wearing the only wetsuit. Without one, Mastrantonio can't make it back to the deep sea station. Harris offers to give her the suit, but she says it's too late, because she's already freezing.

Her solution is that he should let her drown. She points out that the water is so cold that it will keep her body preserved long enough for him to drag her corpse back to the sea station, where he can revive her(!). In other words, it's a war between the two kinds of death: by hypothermia and by drowning. There's a middle ground where she dies but can be revived later, because one form of death keeps the other from totally killing her off too quickly.

If Romney could dispatch all of his opponents at once, of course, that would be best for him. But until then, having them all keep one another at bay, even inadvertently, seems to be working best for him.

Tom Cruise as Lee Child's rogue hero Jack Reacher???

I love reading Lee Child's series of novels featuring ex-Army MP Jack Reacher, even if Reacher's frequent brutal and amoral murderings of the villains leave me somewhat ill at ease. (Then again, "24" is probably my all-time favorite TV show, and it's not like Jack Bauer is a paragon of morality.) I should be excited that Hollywood may be finally making a movie version.

But really, Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher? Reacher is 6'5" and about 250 pounds. He uses his immense physical size and strength to batter his opponents, often to death. He doesn't use fancy martial arts of any sort. He describes himself as a brawler. He likes delivering elbow strikes to the side of the head, or headbutting.

Don't get me wrong. Although I think Tom Cruise comes across as quite a strange guy these days, I've generally found myself liking his movies. That's a testament to his acting skills. That said, the sheer gap in physical match between Cruise and Reacher is pretty stunning.

Reacher is pretty laconic. It's too bad the former Governator is too old to play him. He'd be a decent choice. Off the top of my head, The Rock is probably the closest high-profile actor to match Reacher. But not Cruise. Please, no.

Wow, that Star Trek episode where Kirk et al age rapidly -- there's really such a disease???

Remember the original Star Trek episode "The Deadly Years," where Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Chekov, and a redshirt return from visiting a planet, and they all start aging rapidly, except for Chekov? (Strangely, the aging disease did not make Captain Kirk look much like Denny Crane.)

The aging in the episode was caused by radiation, but it turns out there's a real-life version of this disease:

Some have argued that the condition is lipodystrophy - a rare syndrome that causes a layer of fatty tissue beneath the surface of the skin to disintegrate while the skin itself continues to grow at a startling pace.

The syndrome with no cure leaves its victims with loose folds of skin all over their bodies, wrinkled faces and the gaunt features of people decades their senior.

The condition is extremely rare and out of around seven billion people on the planet, only 2,000 are thought to have lipodystrophy.

Scary!

Is "Star Trek" better than "Star Wars"?

Well, I'd say so, but don't take it from me. None other than William Shatner confirms it.

I read somewhere once (can't remember where) that no matter how awesome you think the "Star Wars" movies are, you have to remember that they start with Jar Jar Binks and end with the Ewoks.

Cheesy (but awesome) kung fu flicks of the 1970s

This may not come as a surprise, but starting in my pre-adolescent years, I became a big fan of cheesy kung fu flicks, particularly the category known as "Bruceploitation." Naturally, Bruce Li (real name Ho Chung Tao) was my favorite of the would-be successors to Bruce Lee's legacy, and I eagerly lapped up the Saturday afternoon kung fu matinees that KTLA aired during this time. Yes, the acting was . . . not good, and the vocal dubbing even worse. But who could not love the whooshing sound effects that accompanied punches and kicks?

Anyway, not too long ago, I saw that Amazon was selling DVDs of some of the old Bruce Li movies. I correctly anticipated that the actual picture quality would be subpar, but the movies were selling for around $5, so that wasn't unreasonable.

The first one that I bought was The Image of Bruce Lee, which is about a counterfeiting ring or something like that. My memories of it were that it had Bolo Yeung (maybe most notably the antagonist in Jean Claude Van Damme's Bloodsport) as a menacing presence, but not even the main bad guy; and a very pretty female character who teases Li's character and his partner. Oh, and lots of fighting. In fact, I don't remember the plot at all, just that there were lots of fights, including one scene where Li walks into a martial arts school and ends up fighting everyone.

What I discovered on the DVD was that KTLA had done some judicious editing . . . of multiple nude scenes! Which makes complete sense of course, although I guess you could wonder how the broadcast standards department could get concerned about nudity but not care about extreme violence. I mean, if you took the graphic violence away from this movie, you would be left with . . . um, the credits and the ending.

Well, I just picked up Return of the Tiger, another of my favorite Li flicks. I'm wondering if that has some naughty scenes that KTLA spared my pre-teen eyes from seeing. This one has somewhat more of a plot involving a drug war and undercover Interpol agents, but mostly I remember a scene in a gym where Li fights a judo expert, but only after oiling his body up so much that the judo expert can't get a proper grip on him to do any throws.

In case you are wondering, the other Li movies that I'm keeping an eye out for are Exit the Dragon, Enter the Tiger (which is a revisionist alternate history of Bruce Lee's death, with Li's character tabbed by Lee as his avenger), and The Three Avengers (which probably doesn't need any more explanation than the title).

What kind of FBI agent would I be?

If you go by the FBI's physical fitness entrance exam, it seems like I'd be the kind of agent who could run away from all kinds of threats. . . .

To be minimally qualified on a physical level for the FBI, you have to pass four fitness tests with at least one point in each test, and a total of 12 or more points. The four tests are number of sit-ups in one minute, number of push-ups (untimed), sprint time for a 300 meter run, and time for a 1.5 mile run.

I've tested myself and I can get 1 point on the sit-ups (it's the one minute limit that keeps me from doing better), 1-3 points on the push-ups, 4-6 on the 300 meter sprint, and 6 on the 1.5 mile run. So I'm barely adequate on the push-ups and sit-ups, but I would rack up most of my qualifying points on the running scale.

Well, Special Agent Fox Mulder had to do a lot of running in "The X-Files," so I wouldn't be totally useless to the Bureau.