Posts Tagged ‘Conan’
A Few Links
* If you’d been foolish enough to bet $5 that Joe Biden could walk into a Midwestern custard shop and not create some sort of national incident by uttering a mild profanity, well, it’s time to pay up.
* FIFA to address calls for technological replays in the stupidest manner possible.
* Following up on yesterday’s links, Robert Byrd has died.
* One reason why humans are special and unique.
* How a superhorse travels through time (and why).
* Rithmomachia: the Philosophers’ Game.
* And Conan the Barbarian: The Musical. It’s been that sort of week.
Letterman v. Conan v. Palin
Letterman beat Conan’s Tonight Show in the ratings on Tuesday, but that’s been lost in the controversy over a pair of borderline Palin family jokes from Monday night. The “slutty flight attendant” line, though certainly uncalled for, seems to me equivalent to the sorts of things that are said about the Clintons and the Kennedys—uncool, that is to say, but roughly commensurate with the price of fame. The “knocked up by Alex Rodriguez” thing strikes me as significantly worse because celebrity children who are underage or don’t seek the spotlight should, I think, be left alone, even in the otherwise unrestrained pursuit of comedy. (I think I’d probably feel differently in Letterman had been in a comedy club or on a college campus somewhere; the Chelseas and Bristols of the world shouldn’t have to see themselves mocked on TV.)
The idea currently shooting around the right-wing blogs that this was a joke about raping a fourteen-year-old girl, though, strikes me as a completely hysterical overreaction. There’s no remotely charitable reading of the situation that suggests the phrase “her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez” would ever be intended to trigger thoughts of Willow Palin. (To whit: Instapundit.) That it was Willow and not Bristol at the game is certainly bad luck for Dave, and I wouldn’t have blamed Sarah Palin for getting in a jibe or two about it, but that fact is not something either the audience or Dave himself can reasonably be believed to have been thinking of. You can call Letterman out for crossing the line without turning things all the way to 11.
Celebratory Links
I had a nasty case of food poisoning or something last night—fever, chills, the whole bit. But now I’m back and quite literally better than ever. A few links to celebrate my recovery:
* Early reviews of Dollhouse remain mixed. We’ll know tomorrow….
* This YouTube clip (via MeFi) captures just the barest sliver of the greatness of the Conan DVD commentary. It is our civilization’s highest cultural achievement.
* The trailer for the new Tarantino is out.
* How to teach non-canonical material responsibly in a composition class: lesson plans from Scott Eric Kaufman on Dark Knight and Watchmen.
* Two satellites have collided in orbit. Apparently that’s never happened before. More from MeFi.
* Happy birthday, Charles Darwin. More from Satisfactory Comics.
I don’t think I’ve met anyone else who watched this cartoon, but I’ll be dead before that theme song ever stops floating around my mind.
The Director’s Commentary Will Be *Epic*
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Arnold Schwarzenegger Will Return as Conan in New Reboot.
Written by gerrycanavan
October 25, 2012 at 8:29 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Conan, film, world-historical director's commentaries