thank god for c.i. over at the common ills. there are days when i can't even stomach the main section of the new york times and go to the common ills for a summary. this was 1 of those days.
i hope people are also listening to the laura flanders show on air america because that's a strong show. tonight they covered the ohio congressional committee taking testimony in ohio and c.i.'s already got a post on that full of quotes so go there.
but my favorite part was the same as laura flanders' favorite part. when stephanie tubbs-jones told kenneth blackwell that if he didn't like her questions he could 'haul butt' and 'go on, see you.'
people said things like 'oh nothing will happen.' that wasn't the point of needing ohio coverage. the point was it was news and we needed to be informed. the point was that stephanie tubbs-jones (who's not even on the committee) was taking a brave stand and unless we're spineless cowards, we should be paying attention and supporting her.
i'll also say 'way to go' to juanita millender-mcdonald. and if i can be crude, and any 1 coming to this site knows that i can and usually am, why is it that all the democrats in congress that have balls seem to be women? barbara boxer, maxine waters, stephanie tubbs-jones, cynthia mckinney, juanita millender-mcdonald . . . now there are a few brave men in congress but they're mainly in the house and if you want to be really honest about it, male or female, take away barbara boxer, russ feingold, ted kennedy and robert byrd and all the bravery is coming mainly from the black caucus out of the house.
i'll also take a moment to note 1 story from the third estate sunday review's latest edition and i'll try to do that at least once a week. since every 1's e-mailing about the tv review that ava and c.i. did of smallville, i'll note that they review john stamos's jake in progress.
From the hype, we were cued to expect a male version of Sex in the City, full of snappy remarks and sex driven plots. But then . . . we watched.
The show is all tease. We're not just saying that they cut away from the sex scenes because we weren't expecting to see Stamos and assorted others flashing the rears at the camera. (And outside of Wendie Malick, no one in the cast should even consider doing that -- see notes at the end on Stamos' body.) But we were expecting that the show would be about sex.
And it really wasn't. Jake is supposed to be a sex machine. And we get a lot of sex talk. A lot of openings. But no closure. No sealing the deal. Talk, talk, talk. And it's not locker room talk. This is like eavesdropping on the high school chess club: they'd really, really like to have sex, but they never really, really get to.
color me disappointed, i had so many hopes for that show.
they mention me in the review so of course i'll quote that. i have no problems with being self-referential!
Rebecca has written about how to make Jake in Progress a hit (before the show aired) and she wanted us to answer this important question: How much flesh does Stamos show?
Rebecca, not much. In one scene (when he wakes up by the hot tub the next morning and the woman is gone), you get to see his chest. Otherwise, if he's in bed with a woman (talking!) you see his shoulders and her shoulders. (It's like sex between those big doll heads you could style the hair on.) His sleepware is a t-shirt and what appears to be silk pants or possibly shiny sweat pants. So your hopes that he'd be running around in a pair of BVDs, consider those dashed.
The body itself isn't much to note. That might be why you get so many shoulder shots. His pecs are like late 80s Richard Gere pecs -- on the verge of losing all tone and emerging with the fold lines that dominated so much of Gere's bare chest acting in the 90s. We like to call that When Pillow Pecs Turn Into Fold Out Sofas. (You're welcome to come up with your own classification.)
i love that, pillow pecs turn into fold out sofas. richard gere is so hot and then he takes off his shirt and those former pillow pecs just sort of slide down his chest now. if the show's not doing shots of john stamos in bvds, believe me, it's not worth watching and will soon be cancelled.
ava and c.i. are astute, delightful and so damn funny. it's like printed stand up.
and speaking of stand up, since i didn't have to trudge through the main section of the paper, i was able to enjoy other parts. let me put you wise to the fact that the incredible janeane garofalo has a profile in the arts section. janeane's a stand up woman both in the sense that she does stand up and in the sense that she stands up for what she believes in. she's funny and smart and, no matter what she says, she's gorgeous. but i do wonder why the paper ran two photos of her that were so old. she stopped bleaching her hair blonde forever ago. i didn't care for the blonde hair but even with it, she was gorgeous. if you haven't checked out the majority report yet, do so for janeane because she's the real deal.
