Posted 9:11 PM by Angie Schultz

Newspaper Helps Widen Rift

In today's Houston Chronicle there's an article titled, "Net helps widen rift between left, right: Web sites harden already opposing political positions". It begins:

Erica Anthony-Benavides is a junior at Trinity University in San Antonio, a member of Ladies in Physics and not very politically active. But because she signed a petition against the war in Iraq, a national conservative Internet site has declared her an enemy of America.

Gasp! Dissent is crushed! (Er, except for being in the Chronicle.) What is this powerful tool of the Establishment??

It's Free Republic. To be more specific, it's one guy on Free Republic who posted a list of the signers of an ANSWER partition, with the title "Here is the enemy -- they have posted their names". The Chronicle actually tracked down the guy who posted it, who calls himself "Doug from Upland":

[Doug] said he wanted fellow subscribers to FreeRepublic to know the names of people who had signed on to what he described as a communist organization.

Er, ANSWER is a Communist organization, intertwined with the Workers World Party. Or, if you don't trust that fascist rag, the LA Weekly, maybe you'll like this from The Nation better.

That's pretty much it for the Erica Anthony-Benavides saga. She's quoted as saying that:

I don't know why they want to accuse us of treason. It's not fair. We haven't done anything. We've just said something that somebody doesn't like."

Despite the fact that the article begins with her and is about one-third devoted to her, there's no suggestion whatever that Ms. Anthony-Benavides has been materially injured by her brush with the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, unless you count getting her picture in the newspaper. There's nothing whatever to show why she should have been chosen to represent those unfairly-labeled "enemies".

The Chronicle then turns to the boycott a liberal group is organizing against Rush Limbaugh. Quoth the owner of Take Back the Media, Michael Stinson:

I'm not going to pay money to [Limbaugh's] advertisers for him to call me a Marxist and a traitor to my country.

The article finishes up with the saga of "former liberal Sen. Jim Abourezk D-SD" (is he a former liberal or a former Senator?), who's suing the site ProBush.com for putting him on their "traitor list". (The article says the site claims the list is a parody, and it also says so on the list web page, which I suspect is a result of the lawsuit.)

So our fair and balanced score is:

• one guy on a conservative website who calls a bunch of people traitors
  
• one guy from a liberal website who says he's not gonna let Limbaugh call him a traitor
  
• one (possibly former) liberal Senator suing a conservative website for putting him on a list of traitors (for parodic purposes only, mind you)
  

Hmmmm. What's missing...what's missing...oh yeah! I know! How about:

• SF Indymedia supports the troops when they shoot their officers (link to noted hate site[*] LGF)
  
• Philly Indymedia concurs! (LGF link)
  
• Kill Bush for Jesus! (too disgusting for LGF to repeat, direct link)
  
• CIA/Mossad behind DC sniper killings (that was before they were caught) (LGF link)
  
• Democratic Underground asks, Does Nader = Stalin? (LGF link)
  
• Are all Americans racist? (DU again, trying to figure out why Bush is ahead -- at that time -- in the polls) (LGF link)
  
• The Best (or Worst) of Democratic Underground from John Hawkins of Right Wing News (so you know it's gotta be biased)
  

[*]definitely parody

The rift, as the Chronicle sees it, seems to be entirely the result of conservatives calling liberals traitors. The liberals have apparently been perfect angels, aside from some entirely understandable boycotting of blowhard Rush Limbaugh.

Now, I think calling people traitors is a crock, even if they are Commies (though it'd be nice to make an exception for Jihad Johnny Lind, Jose Padilla, and Yaser Hamdi---not that any of those guys are going to face treason charges). But even those cries of "treason" from the Freeper peanut gallery are pretty weak tea compared to the crap that goes on at DU and Indymedia. Oh, the article mentions the DU URL, in a sidebar: DU vs FreeRepublic, and a matched left-right set of boycott sites.

See? Fair, and balanced.

Posted 4:21 PM by Angie Schultz

The Sleeper Wakes

(This is several days old, but I'm going to post it anyway.)

I've noticed an encouraging trend recently, which is that the mainstream media has suddenly become aware that there are certain sections of the media which have become, well, nuts.

For example, USA Today's Walter Shapiro seems to have suddenly noticed that some people believe some very odd things, and it's obviously upsetting his tummy. In this USA Today column, he reviews Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, more in sorrow than in anger. Let's get out the Seven-Up and soda crackers while we read:

Despite all the hype and Moore's undeniable comedic talents, Fahrenheit 9/11 is a profoundly disturbing movie that struck me as far closer to heavy-handed propaganda than to art.

No!

Does anyone seriously believe, as Moore suggests, that the United States invaded Afghanistan primarily to pave the way for a natural-gas pipeline?

Well, Ted Rall does. In fact, he wrote an entire book on this subject. Is Rall anybody? Perhaps not.

Or that the war in Iraq was a single-minded effort to win new contracting business for Halliburton?

Yes. Yes, in fact a lot of people believe the President of the United States launched a war that was unpopular internationally and very controversial at home, and which cost 800 American lives (so far) and billions of taxpayer dollars---not to take all Iraq's oil for the US, not to give it to his rich friends, not even to allow his rich friends to buy the oil cheap, but so that a few of his rich friends could get a few percent richer selling stuff to oil companies. (Since Halliburton is not an oil company, but an oil services company). And they're not even his rich friends, they're the Vice-President's. Compelling, eh?

In fact, this reasoning is so compelling that I have noticed that the Great Satan of Afghanistan, Unocal[*], has been displaced by Halliburton.

The question hanging over Fahrenheit 9/11 is: Will viewers regard it as "just a movie" that takes frequent artistic liberties with verifiable facts, or will they see Moore's handiwork as the unveiling of a vast and frightening conspiracy?

A good question. One thing we know for sure is, Moore will try to have it both ways. He wants to be taken seriously as a political commentator (or satirist at least), but when confronted with his inaccuracies and outright distortions, will protest that he's just an entertainer and so indulges in a little artistic license from time to time. (This behavior is widespread in the tribe of pundits: Rush Limbaugh does it too, among others.)

Shapiro has some good things to say about the movie, though:

Then, in a memorable scene near the Capitol in Washington, Moore pointedly tries to persuade members of Congress to sign up their own children for service in Iraq.

Ah, you mean the one in which Moore asked Rep. Mark Kennedy to help him enlist the children of Congressmen, but doesn't show Kennedy's reply, which was that he had a nephew in Afghanistan? This Twin Cities article refers to the trailer, but Moore's own website acknowledges that Kennedy was not in the film, either, in the most brilliant bit of doubletalk this side of Noam Chomsky:

None of this exchange [between Moore and Kennedy, scroll down for a transcript] is included in the film. No statements by Rep. Kennedy are in the film. There was no editing of his remarks and Congressman Kennedy will remain in the film.

No statements of Kennedy are in the film because Moore threw them all out, possibly because it didn't suit his agenda. If you included some of Kennedy's remarks but not others, that would be editing; but if you cut them all out, leaving only the question you asked, as if Kennedy did not want to answer you, then that's OK. That's not editing. Gotcha.

When Michael Moore was asked whether he was a poseur using the adulation of those deficient in critical thinking to dismiss accusations that he was an intellectual lightweight, he had no reply.

Um, cause I didn't actually email him the question. Which is actually less dishonest than what he did to Kennedy.

[*]Unocal owned almost 50% of an international consortium, Centgas, which wanted to build a natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan through Afghanistan beginning in 1997. But Afghanistan was so unstable that it was a no-go and Unocal pulled out of Centgas in December 1998 --- this BBC report from August 1998 calls it "ironic" that the US thwarted Unocal's hopes by bombing Bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. Yeah it's all about the oi---er, gas.

Recently I read someone letting Unocal off the hook completely, because it's obvious that Halliburton was going to build that pipeline.

Via InstantMan.

Posted 7:54 AM by Angie Schultz

Lost, and Found

Dr. Frank is interested in "found text"---by which he usually means other people's lost and discarded letters. The other day he wrote about a different kind of found text: inscriptions in books. He wonders about the people who sell or give away books in which someone has written a very personal inscription. In the comments to that post, I mentioned one I'd found, and another commenter, Myke, has a sadder example.

But I plumb forgot about a different kind of inscription I found in a used book. I bought it at the library sale in Menlo Park, California. The Bay Area was chock-full of library sales, yet another reason why I miss it so (and the reason why I have far too many books!). Palo Alto had one every month, but the Menlo Park and Los Altos sales were best.

The book I bought was one of the souvenir books you get at the Louvre, dating from the 1950s. When I was there I didn't have the money for one (they were pricey), so when I saw this one I thought maybe it would be a cheap way to pick one up.

It wasn't a very good book, though, since it had very few color photographs, and the ones it did have were rather dark and muddy-looking. I don't know whether 1950s technology was that bad, or whether the plates had degraded in the ensuing 50 years (or if the paintings themselves were dark and muddy).

I didn't realize that until I got it home and looked at it more closely. But then I noticed the writing all over the front endpapers. The book had an inscription to a "Ralph Finkelstein" (some name like that---the book's packed away and I can't get at it). But the inscription was almost lost among the other scribblings---in several different kinds of pen and pencil, at various angles, but all in the same hand, different from that of the inscription.

It seemed to begin, "In 1952 Ralph and I toured Europe and the Holy Land". It might not have been '52, but it was sometime in the '50s. The other writings were little notes about what they saw and did. At one point the writer mentions how inspiring the trip was, the trip of their lives.

I imagined that Ralph had died, and his grieving widow had written the little notes in order to preserve that bit of their history. She felt so much closer to Ralph as she remembered it. And the children certainly will want to know about their parents' lives, and what they did on the trip. It was historic, for one thing, touring the infant Israel.

For years, maybe, she'd get out the book and write down another reminiscence.

And then poor Mrs. Finkelstein died herself, or went into the nursing home, and her children, the clods, gave the book to the library sale. Very sad.

But that wasn't the most interesting aspect of the book. The inscription, as I said, was in another hand. Mrs. Finkelstein notes: "The inscription reads, 'To Ralph Finkelstein, in an appreciation of fine photography.' I can't make out the signature."

That is indeed the inscription. But I don't know why she couldn't make out the signature. It's as plain as day.

It reads, "Itzhak Rabin".

But, I'm sure that's a really common name.

Posted 8:57 AM by Angie Schultz

Portrait of the Artist as a Young...WHAT?

Actors and presidential candidates are notorious for being haunted by less-than-savory episodes in their pasts. Does the same thing happen to artists?

I was looking through Lileks's Stagworld collection today, and came across this illustration of Nazi debauchery. I was struck anew by how very much this picture resembles the work of beloved science fiction artist Kelly Freas. It's the highlights of the bodies, and especially the hair, that reminds me of his paintings.

Compare the hair in this cover for John Brunner's The Stardroppers, or this one for Brunner's The Stone That Never Came Down. Or look at the girl in this one for Arthur Tofte's Crash Landing on Iduna. Unfortunately, depictions of Nazi orgies leave little opportunity for for Freas's trademark stars. This page (in French) has a nice collection of Freas illustrations.

There's no mention of Sir! in Freas's bibliography. To look at that, you'd think Freas had never done anything but covers from 1950 on. But I don't put everything in my vita, either. Not enough room!

I looked for a signature but didn't find one (perhaps Lileks cropped it off).

It may not be Freas's work. But if it is, the Nazi in the middle is probably not his conception of himself (as Lileks suggests). Freas apparently sees himself more like this.

Posted 3:34 PM by Angie Schultz

Boa'd Stiff

Actually, the boredom springs more from this review than from the movie (Boa Vs. Python, for those who came in late, as seen on the Sci-Fi channel), which was only medium-boring. I tried to cut it down, but it wouldna budge, Cap'n!

(I was thinking of titling it "Plenty Python and the Wholly Failed", but restrained myself. You owe me.)

For an actual entertaining movie review, see Mark Steyn's review of The Day After Tomorrow. All I got is this.

Summary: A rich jerk organizes a "canned" hunt, with the prey to be a giant (and I mean giant) python he's picked up somewhere. When it gets away from him, the government drafts a scientist's giant (giant) boa to track it down. Hilarity ensues, and many people are eaten.

Special tag line: Monica never saw a snake this size before!

Plot: The movie opens with an event that looked like a combination prize fight, beauty contest, and political convention. It turned out to be a good old wrasslin' match, the kind where the wrestlers have masks and comical names like "Boa" and "Python". Oh, wait, that's all of them. Once our jerk protagonist and his honey (Angel Boris, last seen as the feisty princess in Dragon Storm) are seated at ringside, the wrasslin' can begin.

(Actually, the IMDB listing for this movie says that Angel is Monica, but this review (better than mine, damn him, or at least shorter) says that Jaime Bergman (a former Baywatch babe) is Monica. You couldn't prove it by me; all hot babes look alike to me. I shall proceed under my initial assumption.)

There's no point in describing the wrestling match. See Sampson vs. the Vampire Women for details, or Racket Girls, particularly the scene where the Leopard Lady wrestles the Panther Woman.

Intercut with the wrestling are scenes of a number of beefy, heavily-armed men, led by an Amish guy, shutting up a truck. After a while the jerk at ringside receives a phone call from the Amish guy, whom he refers to as Ramon. He lays a little Spanish on him, they have a cryptic discussion about whatever the hell it is they're doing, and sign off. Ramon continues to give orders in a markedly Slavic accent. He sounds like Yakov Smirnoff. The little convoy starts on its way.

We continue to cut rapidly back and forth between the wrestling match and the convoy. The convoyers determine that there is something wrong with their living cargo. It's supposed to be tranquilized out the wazoo, but it's thrashing around in there. They open the truck a little bit to dope it up some more, but things get out of hand. Ramon decides he'll have to kill the thing with some dynamite he's brought along for the occasion, but he only manages to blow up himself, his helpers, and the truck---but the python (for of course that's what it is) escapes.

The truck explodes at the same time that the wrestling match is concluded, and the jerk and his honey leap up and embrace each other. I think there's supposed to be some sort of irony there, but if so it went sailing over my head and landed with a splat on the wall behind me, then slid down leaving a trail of slime. Uck.

Later, the cops are at the scene, and so is a reporter. Here we have a special treat, Blogland's Own Jeff Rank as the smug, smarmy, sensationalist member of the Fourth Estate. I'll go into the details later. He tries to get a quote from [FBI? CIA? BATF? IGA?] Agent Notso Sharp, who arrives on the scene with one of the worst haircuts in recent memory. He's balding, you see, which could happen to anybody, but he's not quite there yet, and so his buzzcut makes it look as if mold is growing on his dome. Plus he has sideburns. Agent Sharp brushes the reporter off, and goes to see what his partner, Agent Repressed, has found.

Well, a buncha entrails, for starters, but not much else. Then Agent Sharp notices what no one else has noticed, despite the fact that it's pretty damn obvious: a scale the size of a playing card. (I saw this scene in Blade Runner, except it was a small-scale scale.) Notso Sharp probably wouldn't know what it was, if the snake hadn't helpfully eaten a guy in a water treatment plant nearby. Sharp determines that We've got to close the beaches!, but since they aren't any nearby he settles for shutting off Eastern Pennsylvania's water.

Next we're whisked off to what the annoying title cards tell us is Miami, Florida. We get to see a whole meatlocker full of Bulgarian beefcake, lounging around a pool. Also lounging is our next character, a perky blonde (is she the same one as in Phantom Force?) who challenges one of the sides o' beef to a breath holding contest (insert dirty joke here) underwater. Her name, readers, is Monica. Monica is going to play with snakes. At this point the movie-mocking centers of the brain begin to overheat, but we must press on.

She wins the contest by flashing her boobs at her opponent, who goes into cartoon-style hubba-hubba mode and is forced to surface. Triumphantly, Monica begins collecting her winnings, paid in stage money whose counterfeit nature can be detected from Mars. Suddenly the weak Miami sunshine is eclipsed by Agent Sharp, who needs her help.

He takes her to a building in Maryland which is identified as the Longreen Snake Reserve, just down the street from the Shortbrown Snake Reserve, and around the corner from the Fatblack Snake Reserve. In these buildings are kept America's strategic reserves of snakes, stockpiled against the day when, God forbid, we might need to deploy them. That day has come.

Or something like that. Sharp introduces Monica to what appears to be the young Bill Murray. (Not) Bill Murray also has a snake. Agent Sharp wants Bill to show his snake to Monica. It is a very big snake. Monica is mighty impressed with the size of Bill's snake. Warning! Warning! Brain temperature is above normal. Service brain soon.

Monica, it develops, is Swimmer with Dolphins. She loves dolphins, so she's been working with the Navy to fit them with cruel brain implants which will allow them to act as living, underwater UAVs. Sharp wants to know whether she can implant these same doodads into Bill Murray's snake, an enormous boa constrictor (cleverly) named Betty. The idea is that Betty will hunt down the python, and our heroes will be able to track her and capture or disable the other snake.

While they're performing brain surgery on the giant boa, let's check in with jerk-boy and his girl. We see that they are aboard a private jet painted in ugly cartoon colors with big cartoon lettering on the side: Broddick. This is the fabulously-rich jerk. The jet may be ugly outside, but inside it's furnished in the tasteful style of Caligula's Rome, with marble pillars and a big bathtub.

We eventually learn that Broddick has arranged for a hunt. A bunch of guys have paid big bucks to gather together to hunt down something, namely the python which has now escaped. Broddick looks on the bright side and declares that the hunters will just have to get to Pennsylvania and hunt the big snake where it is.

So the cartoon plane lands at a remote clicheport, where the old movie cliches get together to reminisce about the good old days when they were fresh and new. One by one our hunters arrive, and Broddick gives Angel a helpful capsule description of each one.

The first guy to arrive comes barrelling up in a big-ass pickup truck with a ginormous American flag stuck in the roof, while the soundtrack subtly plays loud country-western music. When the truck grinds to a stop, out steps a pair of snakeskin boots, filled by a big man with a big belt buckle nestling under his big belly. He spends a full three minutes adjusting his hat. Yes, Central Casting has sent over a Texan.

We barely have time to roll our eyes before another car comes fishtailing in, the kind of car that would've been considered dece, choice, and bitchin' in 1970's Missouri. When it finally rocks to a stop a good-looking young man in mysterious shades emerges. "Our military's best sniper." Uh huh.

Next up is another pickup, which weaves all over the pavement and the grass before finally stopping to disgorge two guys in camos and hunter orange vests and hats (nice touch, that). They're father and son, and they're part of the comic relief squad.

Angel says, "Wasn't there one more?" Indeed there was. All heads turn as one, and the camera focuses off into the distance. No, behind the ginormous flag. There, a lone figure is striding toward us through the fields. You know he's been striding just like this forever, never faltering, never stopping in his stride. Not even to pee. He strode like this when he first heard the Call of the Python, when he ceased his hunting of the Abominable Yak of the Uighurs. He strode like this on his way across southern Iraq as bombs fell around him. He kept on striding until he got to the Mediterranean, and he kept on striding, straight into the sea, walking on its bottom until he emerged on the burning shore of Tunisia. And then he took a plane to New York. But he strode from there to Pennsylvania. He looks like something out of Mad Max, or Warrior of the Lost World. This, we are told, is the Master Huntsman.

Our gang of Nimrods performs a slo-mo Right Stuff strut, before heading off to track the python.

The python is running loose on the landscape because Agent Notso Sharp gave strict orders that all exits from the water plant be located, sealed, and guarded. So of course you know they missed one, which the python inevitably found, because pythons are smarter than the FBICIABATFIGA.

About this time Jeff Rank is eaten by the python.

Meanwhile, our brain surgeons "Bill" and Monica have succeeded in giving Betty brain implants. They discuss what the implants do, but all we need to know is that they can track Betty, allow us to see what she sees, and are equipped with very sensitive Plot Sensors, so we know they'll go haywire the moment the plot demands it. Betty is unleashed into the water plant. Bill, Monica, and Agent Sharp follow her with an escort of four soldiers apparently pulled off KP duty to go hunt snakes (they are not very competent).

And finally, we are on our snake hunt.

Broddick and the hunters gad about in the woods for a while. The pathetic father-son team starts screaming that they're tracking something, and firing in all directions. In all the confusion the python eats the Texan (how many people can one python, even a very large one, eat in one 24-hour period? I count about eight so far). It all ends when Pop Hunter uses a hand grenade on his prey, which turns out to be a bunny rabbit, and not the python. But I'm guessing you figured that out. The remaining hunters track the python to its bolt-hole and follow it down.

And after that the movie is just interminable scenes of people wandering around the water plant. Monica carries a laptop on which she can intermittently see through Betty's implants. This, as predicted, malfunctions about every ten feet. Two of their four soldier escorts get eaten by the python, and Sharp tells the others they're excused. The action stops completely while Bill and Monica have a heart-to-heart talk. Bill has the bright idea of flooding the plant (which I guess we can do), which will force both snakes to a small, manageable area of the complex. Too bad he didn't have this idea earlier so we wouldn't have had to sit through the movie.

Broddick sends the sniper and Pop and Jr. off to do some recon. The two teams finally meet up when the hunters hear something approach. Taking careful aim (especially the over-the-top psycho sniper), they fill the creature with hot lead. Unfortunately, the creature in question happens to be Agent Notso Sharp. "Whoops." He promptly dies, but not before uttering his signature catchphrase, "outSTANDing". Oy.

The hunters go into a flurry of confusion and fingerpointing, which allows the python to drag the sniper to his unseen, no-doubt-horrible, doom. It then rises up to kill Pop Hunter, but stops short of killing Junior. The reason, we quickly see, is the water the plant is being flooded with. Bill and Monica run, urging Junior to follow, but he's frozen, and finally swept away by the mighty torrent of CGI.

Meanwhile, on a higher physical (if not metaphorical) level, Broddick, Angel, and the remaining hunter (the Mad Max survivor) have found a clutch of eggs. This is their first indication that something weird is going on, since, as Broddick realizes, he ordered a male snake (oh, like those mail-order giant snake places never make mistakes---why many's the time that I---well, never mind...). Angel is handling one of the eggs when Betty looms up silently behind her.

Angel tries to put the egg down gently, but the butterfingers drops it. Betty tries to give her a comforting hug, as if to say, "I know you didn't mean to. I have other eggs anyway." But she does not know her own snakey strength, and ends up squishing Angel to death. Oops. Broddick and his surviving teammate, misunderstanding Betty's gesture, start trying to kill her. This ticks Betty off something fierce, and she bites the Master Hunter right in two. She leaves before killing Broddick, because we need him for the last act.

The python is not there for the fun, because it's off chasing Bill and Monica. They hide from it by diving into a pool of water. Well, the python hangs and hangs around, and very soon Bill's face starts to contort into a variety of comical shapes. He can't breathe, he can't breathe, he's gonna---

And here Monica grabs him and plants her perfectly-glossed lips right on top of him, breathing oxygen from her copious lungs into his. In other words, Monica gives Bill a bl---Warning! Warning! Brain temperature is critical. Cortical damage may occur.

Anyway, they make it out of the pool and conveniently stumble across Broddick. The two men begin to fight (Bill's mad because of Broddick's stupid python stunt; Broddick's mad because Bill's boa bumped off his babe), but before it can get very far, a badly dubbed FBI agent shows up. The FBI takes them all back to Philadelphia, where they have more equipment for monitoring the snakes (Monica having dropped the other equipment somewhere along the way.)

This is where the movie begins to go into free fall.

They monitor the snakes and find out that the python is eating Betty's eggs. We also find out that Bill has been trying to make Betty pregnant without apparent success, of which the less said, the better. While everyone else is engrossed with the snake opera, Broddick (who is now in full psycho revenge mode after the death of Angel), sneaks away and steals an armored personnel carrier.

At this point I uttered the words that made my boyfriend choke on his tequila. "You know, I don't believe this movie any more."

The Incompetent Army can't stop him, and he drives off into the night. Instantly we're on to a new problem: what's that funny noise? Why, it's music! The FBI/Army was supposed to quarantine a section of the city, but somehow several dozen teenage revellers have managed to penetrate the security cordon and start a dance.

Naturally our entire team heads straight there. A scene of horror awaits them: the whitest dancing you will ever see. How white is it? If there were a Eurovision Dance Contest, this would be the Bulgarian entry. The arrival of the python is a positive relief, especially after it eats the DJ.

This kind of breaks the party up, though, and people run screaming. At this point Broddick shows up, for no adequately explained reason. He's got his flame thrower again, and starts blasting everything in sight except for the snake. The club is asbestos, apparently, but the soldiers where special uniforms soaked in gasoline and paraffin. They burn merrily.

It's only when Betty shows up that Broddick really kicks into high, though, since of course she's the one who killed Angel. In a smooooth move not seen since MST3K fave Future War, Broddick rips off his own shirt so he can die with his manly chest exposed. He begins firing wildly (not with the flamethrower, but with a gun this time), especially at Betty, until Bill shoots him full of snake tranquilizer.

This works better on him than it has on the actual snakes, and he begins an interminable death scene, crawling ever more slowly away until the two snakes, who've been fighting around him, each grab hold of one end and rip him apart. He screams for a few seconds after he's dead. Wouldn't you?

The snakes return to fighting and suddenly we're in a subway station. The hell? How did we get here? No clue. The snakes continue fighting until Bill zaps Betty with an electrical gizmo Monica has implanted in her head. I forget the purpose of this, but it manages to cause an explosion which throws Betty clear of the python, to the far side of the railroad tracks. This occurs just in time for a train to come and hit the python amidships. How cool is that? Really, I ask you: how many movies end with a giant python squashed by a train?

Well, this one doesn't. It's not quite over. Bill and Monica hug, and when they're done, Betty is nowhere to be found. The movie ends in sequel territory, with Bill and Monica about to descend back down into the water plant to fetch Betty back.

---------------

Analysis: Man, writing about this movie has made me cranky. Grrr!

Let's cut to the part everyone wants to hear about: how was Jeff's acting? Pretty good, I thought. Jeff has a rather large role as an arrogant, smarmy TV reporter. He's constantly bickering with his cameraman, who I thought was also very good. It's too bad they didn't get some better lines to say. When Jeff tries to call his station (to get his cameraman fired) on his cell phone, he can't get a signal, and so wanders out into a field until he finds one. He's yakking on the phone when the python gets him. We were sorry he didn't get a better death scene (no blood), but we were rooting for the snake to eat him minutes before it happened, such was the loathesomeness of the character. Good job, Jeff!

He did have one really great line, great in that it left a wide open loophole for MSTing:

Jeff: "...there is something more pungent than the fetid smell of stale humidity in the air tonight. And that's the stench of..."
Me (yelling at the TV): YOUR ACTING

However, there was one flaw. Such a little thing, I hesitate to mention it. You see, while Jeff had the personality of the smarmy reporter down well, I feel there were...physical...mismatches that made the character less than completely believeable. You see, when you're casting an oleaginous reporter, you really need a fellow with a thick shock of plastic hair, a jutting chin, a deep tan, and about 5,000 blindingly white teeth.

I was trying to think of an actor to use as an example, but when I was reading the blog of this poor unfortunate fellow, and I realized he was the perfect type to play the reporter (scroll down to the picture on the left there). Great writer, but just look at him. Wonder how many villas in Cancun that smile paid for, eh? Now, everybody hates guys like that. Women are repulsed by them. Men want to punch them right in the orthodonture, am I right? So Jeff is wise to eschew this style of appearance in favor the babe-attracting Giant American Shorthaired Teddybear look. But still, I found it made him just a little unbelievable as the go-getting reporter. Wasn't his fault.

Onward. That accent of Broddick's---it wanders all over the Anglosphere. What the hell is it supposed to be? British? Australian? Kiwi? South African? Sometimes it sounds almost Irish, other times it sounds American. Maybe it's Bulgarian actor. (In Australia it was apparently de rigeur for actors to take American accent lessons. Maybe he was only partway through his course.)

Remember ladies: if you're going on a dangerous mission, be sure to wear low, tight pants with midriff-baring, deeply decolletaged shirts, for maximum safety. But if you're going to be handling giant snake eggs, it might just pay to wear a less revealing shirt, lest the mother snake think you've already got a couple of her eggs stuffed in your bra, if you get my drift.

At the pool scene---set, you'll remember, in Miami---the camera follows some hot chick (maybe Monica; I forget) around the pool, and foolishly pans up and up so that we see, looming in the distance, Mount Miami. People, this is so not Florida. There's not a single palm tree! You couldn't have rented a palm tree?

The "kiss", where Monica gave Bill the---I mean, gave him oxygen, was actually a nice little bit. The music turned beautiful for a second, and her hair floated like a halo 'round her head. How do filmmakers decide that some tiny bits of movie are beautiful, while others (even most) stink?

One stinker is the hick debuty who falls into the pile of human remains. Perhaps you have to be a 13-year-old boy to enjoy that.

Not since Smokey and the Bandit has there been such a dysfunctional father and son team as Pop and Jr. Hunter. Jeff says (see the comments to that post) Jr. was played by director Stephen Furst's son. Extra points for mentioning Google.

The Master Huntsman: what the hell happened to him? You make a big damn deal about the striding across half the Earth, you get a big scary guy to play him, and---nothing. I don't think he has a single line, or does a thing except get torn in half. I was looking for him to do something more interesting, like slide down the snake's gullet, shooting hot lead, chomping on a ceegar, and laughing maniacally. As it is, he's just living furniture.

The part where Bill and Monica watch the snake sex was funny.

The ending where the python gets run over by the train is quite good, especially the very quick shot of the python's eye just before impact.

But kinda snoozifying after all.

Posted 3:13 PM by Angie Schultz

Please Hold Your Applause

The American Spectator pegs this incident as a mild embarrassment for John Kerry:

Perhaps even Sen. John Kerry is beginning to sense the total lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy. Kerry seemed alarmed by the complete absence of applause, or other audience interaction, he was receiving from a small crowd in Tampa, Florida, on Wednesday.

Kerry was there to accept the endorsement of a national union of emergency first responders, and to hold a "conversation" with local residents about his plans for protecting the nation from bio-terror attacks.

On several occasions, Kerry paused, seemingly expecting applause for his lines.

...

His lukewarm reception was so bad that Kerry lost his cool, telling his audience, "I know you don't want to be here anymore."

"That line actually generated more real cheers," says a bemused Florida Democratic Party official.

Ouch.

However, a lack of applause doesn't necessarily mean a lack of enthusiasm.

Back during the tenure of Big George Bush, I had the dubious honor of hearing Dan Quayle speak. He was addressing one of the semi-annual meetings of our professional society, which was being held in DC. In order to keep the crowd size manageable, the speech was billed as a "scientific" talk: scientists only, no guests. This meant that the wives of distinguished scientists were kept out (those wives who weren't scientists in their own right, at any rate), while grubby grad students like me were let in.

So Dan began his speech. You'll be shocked, I know, to hear that the scientific content was pretty low. Mostly he spoke in short bursts of platitudes. I remember he made a joke about his service during the Vietnam War, which he spent in the Indiana National Guard. (Democrats mocked him for this, and a few years later forgot that Clinton didn't spend any time in any Guard. Now they're back to mocking. But I digress.)

A few months before, he'd said something rather dim about the possibility of water on Mars, leaping wildly to the conclusion that the presence of H2O meant the presence of oxygen. Strangely he did not allude to this in his speech to us.

Now, the first part of the speech we sat there and just listened. But after a while the society's own Vice President started to applaud at every pause. It dawned on us that this is the sort of thing that's expected at political speeches. We hadn't been doing it before, not because we disagreed with what he said, but because it was a scientific talk, and we don't applaud in the middle of scientific talks. Although it might be kind of cool if we did:

"And so we find that, contrary to current theory, the emitted flux does not increase with temperature"

Bravo! Bravo! Phweee! Yeah! Author! Way to pontificate!

I also want flowers thrown up on the stage. Er, except we almost never have a stage. And since we speak to crowds of, oh, tens, we're usually in very small rooms. The force of a bouquet tossed from a distance of six feet might knock some of the lighter scientists down. That might be cool, too, seeing as how I'm not one of the lighter ones.

Er, anyway, it was amusing to read the papers the next day. Each one had fastened onto a different set of platitudes, and so had an entirely different take on the speech. The best one, though, was headlined "Scientists a Tough Audience for Quayle". We didn't mean to be, honest.

Although it would be strange if an organization giving an endorsement didn't know you were supposed to applaud wildly at every third word. It almost makes me feel sorry for Kerry. Hmmm...do you suppose this is his cunning plan? Having given up on the tired methods of clarity of vision and personal warmth, he's trying the fresh approach of appealing to our pity. Could this wily scheme work??

Via Tim Blair.