Are You Smarter Than a Doorjamb?

OK - there's a show called Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader and a lady on there tonight had won $50,000, and was going for $100k! The question that sent shivers through her bones and caused her to not risk it and take the 50k was from Algebra:

if y=3x and 3x=12. what does y equal?

It's funny to see how just the mention of a y or an x turns people's brains into jelly, but they practically gave her an additional $50k and she could not answer. She said she would've said 4. That's funny. What kind of a leap does it take to think y=3x=12 ??

Do they really have to go that extra step and say: y=12, therefore, what does y equal? Or y is exactly 1 less than 13 and exactly 1 more than 11. What does y equal???

The next lady had to try to figure out what the radius was equal to in a circle with a diameter of 4 inches. Also too tough for her. Never heard the word diameter before I guess.

And the award for Best Over-Acter Goes to...

I rented Mystic River from Netflix, and managed to make it through the whole film despite being repelled by the protagonist's character and by the over-acting of Sean Penn.

Come to find out later, Sean Penn won the Oscar for "Best Actor in a Leading Role" for his portrayal of Jimmy Markum, an arrogant self-absorbed Boston-area father and two-bit thief. I can see why the part would be a natural for Penn (arrogant, self-absorbed) although Jimmy Markum's not the sort of person you'd ever want to know or be friends with.

Nothing about Penn's Markum seemed real to me... if there are people in this world like him, I thankfully have not met them, but his staged breaking through the police lines to see his slain daughter was an obvious attempt to make his character larger than the movie. I wasn't buying it. I saw that as a man crying out, "I AM AN ACTOR!! - SEE MY EMOTION, FEEL MY ANGUISH!" I didn't see Jimmy Markum at all, just Sean Penn being mis-directed by Clint Eastwood.

Of course by now we know that the Oscars have become a kind of political sham. For example, does anyone really believe that 2007's Best Song was "I Need to Wake Up," by Melissa Etheridge? Really? I think the Academy needs to wake up. But back in 2003 the Best Actor award was leaning towards awarding people who portrayed characters who were worse morally than you ever dreamed a human could be. Denzel Washington won in 2001 for his portrayal of Alonzo, a corrupt and racist cop who was more animal than human. Again - not someone you'd ever want to meet, or know. I agree that Denzel is a powerful actor though; worthy of his award. Did he win for Glory, Crimson Tide, or Philadelphia? Movies in which he portrayed characters with some redeeming qualities? Nope. But I digress.

Sean Penn - the Little Richard of acting... please check yourself into rehab for your illness of over-acting. And do we need an Academy that acts as enabler? Oh, and by the way, Kevin Bacon turned in the best acting performance of the three leading men in Mystic River, and he wasn't even nominated. Marcia Gay Harden was awesome as usual in her role, and Laura Linney's portrayal of Annabeth Markum was frightening. That lady is scary looking.

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Borat - The sound of throwing up

Imagine the sound of someone vomiting: "Borat!" "Borat!" After hearing the hype I rented the movie from Netflix. Although there were some laughs in the beginning, the movie became increasingly disgusting, until I reached the point of ejecting the movie sometime after the "do you clean my anus?" dinner party.

Amazingly Rottentomatoes.com gave this movie a 91% fresh rating. That's almost as disturbing as the movie. The jokes were pretty much all used up in the first 15 minutes, after which it became the same staged setup where this jerk exploited people's honest desire to befriend someone of a foreign culture only to insult them repeatedly.

I was puzzled when I heard many people wanted to sue him after the movie came out, but after seeing it, I not only understand but hope that he loses his "anus" big time. He deserves it. "You are suing my ass in the US of A?"

The RIAA Casts Gloomy Web

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates. Bottom line - Webcasters will now have to pay $500 per station annually, and about 1.28 cents per listener hour, retroactively to the beginning of 2006.

For Live365.com, a service that allows individuals to legally run small Internet radio stations, the decision could be a backbreaker. In the Internet business, it's hard enough to predict the future, but when you also have to predict the past, it can feel like a real rift in the space-time continuum. "Live365's royalty obligation for 2006 is running in the range of $350,000 per month, and that's not even addressing the question of the $500 per station mininum!" - RAIN

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Leaders of the Future

High School Student Council Passes Nonbinding Resolution

The Onion makes a funny that's not decidedly biased against Republicans. Now that's news.

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Free Speech in Russia - Please!

"Now that we've killed off all the journalists we didn't like, we're now good to go with that whole free speech thing." (author embellishment)

"Ivan Safronov, the military affairs writer for Kommersant, died Friday after falling from a fifth-story window in the stairwell of his apartment building in Moscow, officials said..."

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in January that 13 Russian journalists have been murdered in contract-style killings since 2006, making Russia the third-deadliest country for journalists after Iraq and Algeria in the past 15 years.

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Who's the idiot now?

After a co-worker quipped to Ed O'Neill that "some idiot" hadn't claimed an $800,000 Powerball winning ticket, Mr. O'neill chuckled, and then after further investigation realized the winning ticket was purchased where he bought his, so he checked the numbers and realized that he was that idiot.

O'Neill will now be an idiot whose mortgage is paid off, as well as his children's mortgages. The co-worker will remain just another idiot co-worker.

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