Textual Healing 01.28.2008

Maureen Dowd has one of those (too-rare) moments when she proves why she gets column inches of the world's most precious editorial real estate. This piece on the scandalous behavior of CEO's using bailout money for luxury perks burns with the same righteous anger thatso many Americans feel. What's gratifying is that something is being done to make it right. Or, at least, righter.

Dowd is delighted that new Treasury secretary Tim Geithner had his office tell Citigroup execs they wouldn't be buying a $50 million corporate jet with some of that $345 billion in government guarantees. She exults that New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo has subpoenaed former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain to chat about the $4 billion in bonuses he handed out while his firm was failing. Dowd says it's time to "bring on the show trials." We would pay to watch.

Thomas Freidman uses the cloying conceit of writing a letter in someone else's voice to suggest his own Middle East peace plan. Here, he pretends to be King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia addressing Barack Obama. Basically, Friedman's "Five-State Solution" is that Israel should agree to withdraw from all of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem. In return, Hamas and Fatah will form a "unity government" that accepts Egyptian and Jordanian troops as peacemakers. Apparently, those troops are also supposed to stop Palestinians from firing rockets into Israel, a prospect that seems unlikely at best.

The Times also has this unintentionally hysterical story about a support group for women whose banker husbands and boyfriends have lost their jobs. "It’s the Economy, Girlfriend" quotes Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a "beauty writer." Dawn is married to a 28-year-old private wealth manager who's deeply depressed by the downturn. “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

Right. Except for that part where she married him; where she stood before family and friends, swearing to love the man for richer or poorer, better or worse, until death do they part. Nice girl. Quality person.

The Wall Street Journal is appalled by the $825 billion legislation being sold as "economic stimulus" by the House. The Journal estimates that only $90 billion, or about 12 cents of every dollar, can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. The rest is raw pork; like $7 billion for "modernizing federal buildings and facilities."

This story on Al-Jazeera by Eric Calderwood is fascinating, if oddly sympathetic. Al-Jazeera's broadcasts, Calderwood writes, "routinely feature mutilated corpses being pulled from the scene of an explosion, or hospital interviews with maimed children, who bemoan the loss of their siblings or their parents..." This graphic response to CNN-style's bloodless journalism, he says, is "a stinging rebuke to the way we now see and talk about war in the United States."

Finally, season eight of "American Idol" is pissing off fans with so-called amateurs like Joanna Pacitti. The "unknown" singer first made national headlines in 1996 when, at age 12, she was fired from the cast of "Annie" before the show hit Broadway. Her parents sued and settled for an undisclosed sum. Later, A&M signed Pacitti to a record deal. She cut songs for several movie soundtracks, including "Legally Blonde," and released an album 2006 that sold 15,000 copies. But, other than that she's just waiting to be discovered by AI. Vote her off, America!

Today in Sex 1.28.2009

Evan Rachel Wood, 21, hit headlines last year by dating Marilyn Manson, 19 years her senior. Since their split in December, Wood has moved on to 56-year-old Mickey Rourke, her co-star in "The Wrestler." The two attended Grey Goose’s Official SAG after-party Sunday evening and were spotted kissing outside the venue.

Ew. Okay, let's forget that Rourke is almost 60. He also played her father on film. That just feels... wrong. Creepy. Just imagine Robert Reed banging Maureen McCormick on the set of "The Brady Bunch" and you'll see what we mean.

Two people who underwent sex-change operations in Thailand are suing Illinois for refusing to issue them new birth certificates, reports the Chicago Tribune. The women say the Illinois Department of Vital Records has typically changed birth certificates for people who've had the operation, regardless of where the surgery took place. Now, they claim, the agency will only change certificates if a physician licensed in the United States performed the surgery.

Because when we need a dangerous, invasive, incredibly delicate, life altering surgery, Thailand is always the first place we go.

John Updike, one of the great literary chroniclers of American sexual mores, and frequent Playboy contributor over the decades, has passed away.

Rest in peace, Rabbit.

A 27-year-old man, Wayne Smith, is back in Nebraska after he and his runaway 15-year-old girlfriend were found living in an abandoned school bus. The girl told detectives she and Smith never lied to each other about their ages, and she did not want Smith to get into any trouble.

No truth to the rumor that the girl was Evan Rachel Wood researching a role.

BabeWatch... Gretchen Mol

"Life on Mars" returns to ABC tonight with a sweet new after "Lost." The show is about Sam Tyler, an NYPD cop stuck who is mysteriously trapped in 1973 Manhattan, where everything is slightly yellow -- exactly like you would see in a photograph taken in 1973. Watch "Life on Mars" for its loving production values, for Harvey Keitel, for Michael Imperioli's facial hair. Better yet, watch for the radiant Gretchen Mol, whose character needs much more to do.

Today We Hate On... The Dismal Science

Last night, the Grinder was whiling away the hours at a local drinking establishment, with the TV belting out something about "global crises" and "panic" and "meltdown" blah, blah blah, the world is ending. A friend, obviously equally intoxicated, made the mistake of asking our thoughts on the economy. The next two hours, the poor sap heard a much longer, much dirtier version of the economy theory espoused below. And why shouldn't we spout off? The Obama administration is calling for citizens to submit their ideas for better government.


FREE(ER) TRADE
How dumb do you have to be to not support free trade agreements? Very. Any country that artificially protects obsolete jobs will lose in the long run. Besides, as mentioned here, free trade doesn't cost jobs. It creates them, because other countries have to drop their restrictions on importing American goods.

THE DRUG WAR IS OVER. DRUGS WON
The War on Drugs has been a monumentally costly failure. Think about it. How many people do you know personally that have been investigated for possible terrorist plots against the United States? Zero. And how many people do you know that have been busted for weed? Some. Exactly. The War on Drugs means jail time about a million Americans every year; about 225,000 just for pot.

This doesn't just mean we should decriminalize weed. Though we should. Yesterday. It also means that American society needs a radical rethinking of our approach to all addictions, legal or not. We need to address drug abuse in this country as a health problem, not a matter of law enforcement -- especially on the Federal level. Moreover, we should stop pretending the only two options in life are sobriety or abuse. Kids should be taught that drugs -- like alcohol-- are just one more of life's many risky bargains. Doing drugs and drinking is like driving too fast. Done occasionally, the right way, it can be a great part of life. Do it too often or go too far, you'll be dead in an instant. That's just how life works.

But we've gotten off topic. The drug prohibition costs billions upon billions every year but does precisely nothing to stop drug abuse.

VOCATIONAL TRAINING
One of Obama's most popular campaign promises was to help everyone who wants to go attend college find a way to pay for it. Bad, bad idea. It is a flat-out mistake to assume that every citizen in the United States needs a college degree. Much wiser would be supporting badly-needed vocational training; teaching people to work with computers, engines, heaters, air-conditioners and the thousands of other machines that keep our world moving. We need more Americans who can make stuff and do things, not another 100,000 English Lit professors and MBAs.

NO MORE BAILOUTS. EVER.
The government should do what government is supposed to do -- take care of people who can't care for themselves, not prop up failed companies. The Grinder would let any company that's about to fail go right ahead and do so. We could use the money we save to give people who lose their jobs extended unemployment benefits and health care. That way, we help people who need it, not failed managers and executives. We can create a strong safety net for people who truly need it, while finally dispensing with the idiotic notion that any company, ever, is "too big too fail."

JockSniffing 01.27.09

Terrell Owens is getting his own reality show. Wait. You mean he doesn't have one already?

Nobody can figure out if Stephon Marbury is going to the Celtics. The New York Post say "yes," and the Boston Herald says "no." Starbury himself appeared on an ESPN.com chat about 20 minutes ago. Apparently, he doesn't know either.

Jimbo (Boston): Simple question: You comin to Boston?

Stephon Marbury: If I can get out the deal, it is one of the teams I will be looking at.

Just so we are on record, it's appalling and offensive that Marbury, the very model of the modern selfish athlete, would get to finish his career by winning a title in Boston.



These new "viral" ads with NFL players are pretty cool-- even if it's all done with special effects.

The ridiculously-named Houston Press blog, Ballz has a compendium of Super Bowl subplots likely to be beaten into the ground before the game starts. Casual viewers will be treated to "insider info," like the stunning revelation that Kurt Warner is a Christian and Troy Polamalu has long hair. Also, as a Grinder aside, the Cardinals will win by a touchdown and their offensive coordinator Todd Haley will be named the next head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Finally, in a desperate attempt to find a story that isn't about football, we note that the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled cheerleading a contract sport.

A cheerleader who fell while practicing a stunt sued the male cheerleader who allegedly failed to spot her and won in the Wisconsin appellate court. Today, the Wisconsin Supreme Court disagreed. It held that the young man who allegedly failed to spot the girl is immune from liability because cheerleading is "a recreational activity that includes physical contact between persons,” Most of the really fun stuff is.

Textual Healing 01.27.2009

If you weren't mad already about the bailouts of financial firms, this guest Op-Ed by David Krasne in the New York Times will get your juices flowing. Kranse explores why institutions that begged for taxpayer aid to stave off bankruptcy would make fat bonus packages for bad bankers their first order of business. This rewarding of failure, he says, defies logic and will likely result in loads of litigation. "Honestly," Kranse writes, "I’m not sure if I should be more offended as a taxpayer or as a shareholder of Merrill Lynch." Then he points out that they've basically become the same thing.

Bob Herbert also brings up bailouts. He devotes his column, as usual, to bashing Republicans. This time it's for handing out all the big bucks to fat cats. Only at the end of the column, as an aside, does Herbert note that Congress was under Democratic control when the firts wave of bailout money was handed out. Way to be post-partisan, there Bob.

David Brooks ruminates on the meaning of cultural institutions. He believes that successful people often define themselves by what they owe the past, rather than what the present owes them.

Caterpillar didn't have to cut all those jobs, says Real Clear Markets. Free trade agreements would have helped. "Contrary to populist doggerel," free trade is "a net job creator, not a job-killer." Free trade kills foreign government tariffs on American goods and enables companies like Caterpillar, hard-hit by them, to sell more abroad.

Benicio del Toro walked out of an interview promoting his new movie about Cuban revolutionary, and hipster t-shirt fodder, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. After fielding hard questions from the Washington Times about director Stephen Soderbergh's sympathetic portrayal of Guevara, Del Torro said, "I'm done. I'm done, I hope you write whatever you want. I don't give a damn," and walked away.

In the film, Guevara, accused of murdering hundreds and imprisoning thousands more in deadly work camps, is shown telling a reporter that the most important thing for a revolutionary is to have "el amor," love.

Soderbergh and Del Torro must have missed the part in Che's 1967 Message to the Tricontinental, when he championed "hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine."

Today in Sex 1.27.2009

A strip club customer is suing the management after getting hit in the face by a dancer's shoe. Yusuf Evans needed surgery on his nose after a "hazardous" high kick by a dancer named Tiara. He wants $25,000 in damages from the dancer and her employers at the XTC club in Akron, Ohio.

Funny. We know a guy who once paid $25,000 because he wanted to get kicked in the face by a dancer named Tiara. Must be the same girl.

Cosmetic surgery is booming in Britain despite the credit crunch. More than 34,000 cosmetic procedures were performed last year – a leap of more than 5% from 2007 - with breast augmentations rising by 30%.

Not that anyone has ever done a study on it (probably), but we'd guess women with big boobs make more money on average than flat-chested girls. That makes breast enlargement a pretty sound investment in troubling times. Hey. Wait. Come to think of it, why hasn't anyone done a study on whether women with big boobs make more money? Let's get on that. We'll even help write the grant.

A Texas woman is facing child endangerment charges after allegedly bringing her 10-year-old son into the cab of a tractor-trailer at a truck stop and having sex with the driver in exchange for a ride to Texas. Police say 34-year-old Crystal Walden of Hurst, Texas, is charged with endangering the welfare of a child for getting into an "unknown male's vehicle and engaging in sexual intercourse" in front of the child.

And the award for Mom of the Year goes to…

An Australian study of 1,580 men says drinking doesn't hinder sexual performance. Drinkers reported up to 30 percent fewer problems in the bedroom than teetotalers.

Of course. Guys who are too drunk for sex are also going to be too drunk to remember it.

The first mixed soccer game since the 1979 Islamic revolution led to punishment in Iran on Monday. Iran’s strict Islamic rules ban contact between unrelated men and women, and Iranian women are banned from attending soccer games when male teams play. Two officials—a coach and two managers— were suspended and fined after video clips from cell phones showed the local men's and women's team's competing in Tehran .

The weird part? Erin Andrews was covering the game from the sidelines.

BabeWatch... Eliza Dushku

There has been a lot of hype around Joss Whedon's new show, "Dollhouse," and the Grinder is officially on the bandwagon. Mostly because the show stars the adorable Eliza Dushku as Echo. She's a member of a secret group known as "dolls" whose minds are downloaded with artificial memories that validate their temporary lives. (Like that's never happened to you.) Off-screen, Eliza just announced she is co-producing a biopic of photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, and has cast her brother in the lead role. Ah, the perks of power.

Today We Celebrate... Weird Billy Joel Covers

We just rebuked Ron Rosenbaum for his attack on Billy Joel and feel great about. Love him or hate him, Joel has contributed a lot to American pop culture. Songs like "Just The Way You Are" and "New York State of Mind" have become part of the Great American Songbook, p[lacing Joel besides names like Gershwin and Porter. Lighten up, Rone. Today the Grinder is celebrating the pugnacious pop rocker from Long Island.


This is wild. It's one dude singing all five parts of "The Longest Time." At the same time. Magic!


Does the band Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies play ska? Or are they more of a ska-surf combo? Or is it like ska-surf mixed with pop punk? Whatev. Check out "Only the Good Die Young," Virginia.


Really, we suggest you don't watch this. Serious. You certainly shouldn't watch it all the way through, lest you witness horrors mortal man was not meant to see.

Today We Hate... People Ragging on Billy Joel for No Good Reason

A few years ago, the Grinder was lucky enough to have drinks with Ron Rosenbaum, and were awed by the company. The man has published books on subjects as diverse as Hitler and Shakespeare, and left us stammering with his erudition. Finding out he was an NFL fan was especially cool. It's always a comfort to meet an intellectual who shares a passion for sports; a reassurance that not all fans are meatheads who get drunk, paint their bodies and spend Sunday picking fights in the stands. But now, sadly, our shimmering image of Rosenbaum is dashed; our once-shining dream crushed by the harsh glare of day. The man has dared to insult Billy Joel.

Okay. Truth be told, we aren't the world's biggest Billy Joel fans. It's not like we ever took a road trip to see him play live or anything. But the Grinder still must defend Billy from Rosenbaum's invidious, and only moderately tongue-in-cheek assault, if only because "A Matter of Trust" once got us through a really bad breakup in college.

Rosenbaum's main gripe is that Joel's music reeks of "unearned contempt," a self-righteous disdain for others and the self-congratulation that goes with it. We don't hear it. Rosenbaum says Joel sounds condescending when he sings in Piano Man that "the regular crowd shuffles in." In New York State of Mind, he mocks the line about "movie stars and their limousines," pointing out that Joel has most likely ridden in limousines many, many times. Of course. Considering how Billy drives, it's the only responsible thing for him to do.

But Rosenbaum's most absurd gripe is that Billy Joel "takes up A&R advances" that would otherwise go to "genuinely talented artists, singers, and songwriters." This is unadulterated crap. If Billy Joel magically disappeared tomorrow, it is extremely unlikely that "genuinely talented" artists, singers, and songwriters, which is another way of saying artists Rosenbaum likes, would suddenly win massive record contracts and huge fame. Record companies would be much more likely to give all that A&R money to artists who sound like, for example, Billy Joel, if they could find any, because Billy Joel makes the record companies a tremendous amount of money. This is the sort of thing that falls under the catagory of "Duh."

What Rosenbaum misses is that music serves a vastly different function for him than it does, for, to be blunt, normal people. That is, people aren't arts critics, who don't make their living dissecting music. For Rosenbaum and other Joel-bashers, music is supposed to be emotionally complex, fraught, deep. But songs that are emotionally complex can, almost by definition, only appeal to a small segment of the population. ,That's because one person's "complexity" is another person's "weird." Songs with very broad, simple themes, like Joel writes, inevitably appeal to a broader crowd. They are designed to. Rosenbaum is like a food critic going to Fatburger and complaining that it isn't gourmet. Maybe not. But a lot of people sure do like it.

Finally, Rosenbaum has the audacity, the sheer temerity, to claim that Billy Joel's music is derivative, noting that "She's Always a Woman" is essentially a sideways version of Bob Dylan's "Just Like a Woman." Which, we can't deny, it totally is. But not bad enough that Dylan could sue.

The defense rests.

JockSniffing 01.26.2008

A baby-name website says "Plaxicxo" means "peaceful" in Latin. It's been a while since we've read much Virgil, so we'll have to take their word for it. Get the shirt here. Don't wear it with sweat pants to a nightclub. The bouncers will not be amused.

Much as we hate to admit it, the Super Bowl isn't really about football. Sure, for NFL freaks like us, the game is history in the making. But most people don't go to Super Bowl parties because they've followed Larry Fitzgerald since he played in high school. Super Bowl parties are about food, drink, spectacle, gambling and, maybe, the chance to see a halftime performer's boob flop out. (Unfortunately, this year's halftime show stars Bruce Springsteen. )
The game is also about TV commercials; an unofficial awards ceremony for the advertising industry and, as the inevitable post-game analysis of ads will tell us, some obscure kind of social barometer.

Spoiler Alert: The biggest Super Bowl advertiser is once again, Anheuser-Busch. The beer company will air three spots with the Budweiser Clydesdales and one starring Conan O'Brien, which lets Conan know where he stands. Coke is a big player. Coke Zero has an ad with the Pittsburgh Steelers' Troy Polamalu that humorously revisits (i.e. tarnishes the memory of) the famous Coke ads from with Mean Joe Greene. DreamWorks has a 3-D trailer (whatever that means) for the new movie "Monsters vs. Aliens." But if we could bet on which ad would be most popular, and this being the Super Bowl we probably can, we'd put our money on actor Jason Statham's ad for Audi. Vroom.

Micah Grimes, coach of the Texas high school basketball team that beat another team 100-0, has been fired. Covenant, a private Christian school, posted a statement regretting the shutout of Dallas Academy; a school with only 20 female students that specializes in kids with learning problems. But the coach disagreed with the apology. He was quoted as saying "Running up the score is regrettable, but we have to do it for the poll voters." Kidding. He didn't say that. He did send an e-mail to a local newspaper saying he would not apologize "when my girls played with honor and integrity," which may have had something to do with him losing his job.

Here's our question. We can see how it's possible for a good girls' basketball team to score a hundred points. But how could even the worst basketball of all time not score a single point for an entire game? Not one lay-up. Not one ten-foot jumper that bounced around and fell through. Not even a free throw? Where were the refs in this thing? Did Covenant go an entire game without committing a single foul, or could Dallas Academy not make a single throw from the charity stripe? You would think that anyone, even the most developmentally disabled kids, could make one lousy shot -- if only from raw luck. We say the fix was in.

BabeWatch... Elizabeth Banks

We used to be mad at Elizabeth Banks. We were upset because J.D. on "Scrubs" ended up having a baby with her instead of Mandy Moore, whom we love. Also, Banks has been in way too many movies lately. From “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” and "W,"to her new thriller “The Uninvited,” she's getting a little bit overexposed. Then again, never let it be said the Grinder objects to beautiful blondes exposing themselves.

Textual Healing 01.26.2009

William Kristol reluctantly admits that liberalism is in it's ascendancy for the first time since Reagan was elected. He wonders what sort of liberalism Obama will bring. Will it be "feckless," as under Carter, or the "unapologetically patriotic" liberalism of FDR? Roger Cohen extols the virtues of the US-German alliance. He says Obama's new ambassador to Berlin should speak German. Does anyone else find it ridiculous that all ambassadors aren't required to speak the native tongue of the countries in which they are posted? But that's a subject for another day.

The Washington Post reports that President Obama today declared a national goal of ending dependence on foreign oil. The new series of steps is aimed at making American cars more fuel efficient. One net effect of the executive orders will be to let California a regulate automobile tailpipe emissions, a trend the rest of the country may soon follow. Carmakers and their lobby are not pleased.

Andrew J. Levy on Forbes.com says closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay will be harder than it sounds. Once on US soil, the 254 prisoners left must either be tried or released. In a criminal trial, defense attorneys would argue (probably rightly) that evidence against the suspects had been coerced and was thus inadmissible. That would mean that some very scary men would be free to walk the streets of the United States. Bad idea.

The Daily Beast has a list breakout actors to watch for in 2009. Mia Wasikowska will become a name you know. She plays Alice (with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter) in Tim Burton's forthcoming adaption of "Alice in Wonderland." The Grinder is a more excited about Olivia Wilde. (That's her smoldering on the right.) Look for her as "Princess Inanna," in the new Harold Ramis comedy "Year One," starring Jack Black and Michael Cera. Olivia is like Megan Fox, if Megan Fox could act.

A man in Moscow was badly hurt when he drunkenly tried to have sex with a raccoon, the Sun UK reported. Russian plastic surgeons are trying to restore the man's mangled organ. “He’s been told they can get things working again, but they can’t sew back on what the raccoon bit off," said a pal. “That’s gone forever so there isn’t going to be much for them to work with."

And now you know why the Soviet Union fell. Vodka and harsh winters are a very unstable mix.

A British government official wants a crackdown on underage drinking because of its connection to unsafe sex, the Telegraph UK says. Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, cites a study claiming young people who are drinking are twice as likely to have unprotected sex as those who were sober.

Sure, we could joke how obvious it is that drinking, at any age, makes people do stupid things (See above, re: raccoon biting penis). But we still haven't gotten over how the guy's name is "Ed Balls."

An inmate at a southern Indiana jail who snuck between cell blocks for sex has been ruled not guilty of escape because he never left the jail. Greene Superior Court Judge Dena Martin’s ruling means charges against two other male and three female Greene County Jail inmates will also likely be dismissed. The inmates removed metal ceiling panels and used the passageway to meet for sexual encounters and homemade alcohol, a police affidavit said.

You've got to admire the ingenuity. But, at the point where you can freely roam the prison and meet for sex and moonshine, maybe it's time to think about digging a tunnel.