Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The most recent episode of Bill Maher, which I hadn't caught in a while, reminded me why I both love and hate the show.

Why I hate it (other than Maher's smugness, which threatens to envelope the greater L.A. area by next Tuesday): The "celebrity" guest, in this case Roseanne Barr, is always the least knowledgeable person in the room, yet always talks the most. (and is always toadying Maher) This leads to the knowledgeable panelist, in this case Washington Post correspondent Dana Milbank to futilely attempt to engage for about 15 minutes, before giving up and sitting in silence for the duration of the show. In Milbank's defense, shutting up Roseanne is a truly daunting task.

Why I love it: simply put, it's on HBO, so they can get away with a lot. Talking about dear old Newt, Maher said "Gingrich just acknowledged, that while he was leading the charge against Clinton for having an extramarital affair, he had an (you guessed it right) extramarital affair! Unbelievable. [pause] Somebody fucked Newt Gingrich." The more I've thought about this one, the more unbelievable it seems. Remember how people said the Kobe rape case actually HELPED his image because it gave him "street cred" Is it possible that Gingrich is lying about cheating on his wife because some moral failing has almost become a prerequisite in politicians these days? Hell, it's a lot more plausible than someone voluntarily sleeping with the dude.

On an completely unrelated note, should I ever have children, they can never go skiing. Riding up a lift today a ski instructor asked me to take up one of her six year old girls. It occurred to me that should she sneeze, it was quite possible she would simply slip out from under the bar and plummet to her death, leaving me to explain her demise to some very angry parents. I was literally nervous the entire ride. Yep, its an impermeable bubble for my kids.

Of course, it didn't help that the kid spoke without pausing to breathe for the entire lift. She had the most monotone, flat affect I've ever encountered, such that it was vaguely creepy in a Children of the Damned sort of way. One conversation sampler: "Do you hear the bird. I think he is trying to tell me something. I know that this lift is 12 minutes long. Do you know how I know? I know because I like to eat carrots. But not carrots that are too big. Because then I spit them up. Carrots are mostly orange but sometimes more like yellow." Really, there was nothing cute about this. In fact, I'm half expecting her to bust into my apartment with a butcher knife.

Back to trying to figure out whether Winthrop is as sexy an upset pick as everyone else on the planet seems to think. Question of the night: Do I have the Onions, capital O, to pick 14 seeded Oral Roberts over 3 seed Wash State? Stay tuned.

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