Scattered Tidbits

Just one last tidibit on the gay marriage thing –

I’ve pretty much stolen all of my reasoning on this topic from Dennis Prager, who writes a compelling article today on the subject that may sound vaguely familiar. (As you’ll see in the article, I lifted my line about the difference between parents being more than their genitalia directly from him.) This one’s a must read.

It seems the early reviewers were wrong – Indiana Jones is getting raves from just about everyone, and it’s clear that the clown who wrote this review – Languatron’s Bane, of all people – clearly hadn’t seen the movie. What a jerk that guy is. He also wrote a review of Superman Returns before it came out, and I’m willing to bet big money he hadn’t seen that one, either. He must get some kind of sick thrill out of pulling the wool over the eyes of the movie geeks who run AintItCoolNews. Who is he in real life? We may never know. Except that he’s a jerk.

Speaking of jerks, Ted Kennedy has a brain tumor. I ought to be somewhat compassionate, but dudes who drown people and walk away tend to be pretty low on my sympathy list.

Tonight’s the big American Idol finale, which will be the first one I’ve seen. I only started watching the show regularly last season, and I stopped watching when Melinda Doolittle was eliminated. So this one promises to be a real battle, and I’d be happy with either guy as a winner. I think Archuleta, being young and Tiger Beatish, probably has a leg up with the teenyboppers who spend hours on the phone voting, but many news organizations are saying that Cook is the favorite. I’m rooting for the Utah kid, but I’d be just fine if Cook won. I wish I were as comfortable with my choices in the presidential election.

Incidentally, last week, I was in a meeting with one of the executives who created the Utah tourism advertising push. Another guy at the meeting pointed out that all the money that had spent on that campaign would be nullified by the sight of David Archuleta’s mayor appearing on Idol complete with his twelve-foot long handlebar moustache. Sure enough, I watched the show, and the mayor of Murray, Utah looked like something out of a 1930s circus act, or perhaps a mutant walrus.




But I tend to think that after the damage the FLDS scandal has done to Utah’s reputation, the goofy moustache didn’t have much impact.

Mrs. Cornell and I have tickets to go see The Police this summer. I’m excited, except Elvis Costello is opening for them, and I’m unfamiliar with the vast majority of Elvis Costello’s catalogue. I’ve always kind of respected him, but never enough to actually listen to his music. I know “Allison” and “Every Day I Write the Book,” and that’s about it.

The Office finale was the funniest episode of the year, which is a good thing, because the last two weeks or so have been clinkers, and I was worried that the show may have been on a permanent downhill slide. The stuff with Kevin’s special needs was hysterical, as was the opener with a classic Jim/Dwight bit. I’m a little concerned that Jim and Pam are being set up to go through relationship traumas just to keep thing interesting, because that’s what lazy writers do when they have to deal with a happy couple. Isn’t it possible that a happy couple can still be funny? Maybe it isn’t. I know that I’m pretty tired of the Michael/Jan stuff, and this pregnancy plotline is already tedious right from the outset.

There are now several movies out that I want to see – Prince Caspian, Expelled, and, of course, Indiana Jones, with The Incredible Hulk and The Dark Knight waiting in the wings. I also wouldn’t mind seeing Iron Man two or three more times. I’m surprised that everyone seems to think Prince Caspian is an improvement on the first Narnia movie, because I thought the first one was pretty dang good, and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe is a vastly superior book to Prince Caspian, which, in my estimation, is a flaccid sequel, at least literarily. The movie sounds as if it transcends its source material, which would be a remarkable thing.

To sum up, gay marriage is still bad, and so is Leatherheads.