apparently, this movie is a habitual line-stepper...

ebert tells us how he really feels about a new release, and just in time for the holidays.

Too much

Anyone else disturbed by the inordinate amount of coverage the death of Tony Dungy's son is getting? SportsCenter's first ELEVEN minutes were devoted to it. They had comments from more than a dozen people throughout the league. If you had tuned in halfway through, you would have thought Tony Dungy himself had died based on the comments.

1) It's a personal tragedy, not a national news story.
2) It's a suicide, which normally media downplays
3) It's a suicide of a teenager, which media downplays even further

It's a horrible situation, but why is it being treated like the biggest news story of the year? Normally it's just "Coach Joe Blow will miss this week's game because of a death in the family." Is it because it's the best team in the league? What if it were a relatively low-profile coach, such as Mike Mularkey or Lovie Smith? It's borderline creepy how much coverage is being devoted to this.

(my initial title for this post was Dungy Overkill... oops)

New Year hypothetical

Mr. ML touched on this on his blog, so I want to throw the question open here...
In time for the New Year, if you could have any dream job, what would it be?
Keep this in the bounds of reason. I can't be the center for the Bulls. Too short. None of us could be president yet. So what is your dream job?
I'm going with talk-radio host. Why? I'm not sure. It just seems like fun and I've always loved the medium of radio.

A Very O'Reilly Christmas

Old Man Dingell actually read this poem in Congress during a ridiculously childish debate on an absurd resolution that would, uh, support Christmas.

Black Ink Monday

Tribune Co. decided every paper doesn't need its own editorial cartoonist. So the cartoonists are taking a stand, futile as it might be.

Some real good stuff here, however.

Some of my favorites:

Savannah

Christian Science Monitor

The Lion's Roar

Freelancer

File under "bizarre coincidence"

I just ran into ex-CRCer Neil Simon, his girlfriend (wife?) Jody, and Jody's parents in the Pentagon City Metro station. They're both looking really well. Apparently, Neil and Jody moved down here just a few months back. Huh. Who knew?

Heath Ledger & Jake Gyllenhaal! Who's in?

Hey, who else wants to see "Brokeback Mountain?

Drawing a line in the Swiss Miss

This world comes down to two kinds of people:

Those who call it "hot chocolate."

And those who call it "hot cocoa."

Which are you? And just so you know, if you're the latter, you suck. :)

programming note

"a charlie brown christmas" airs tonight on abc at 7pm central time. woo!

hail to purple...

there's a part of me that's glad nu is going to el paso...but i still wish we could've road-tripped to nashville. oh well. i'm over it. go u!

Welcome, December.

It's snowing. A fair amount, too. If I were 10, this would be a lot more exciting. Now I'm more concerned with trudging mud and stuff through the house.

Man, I'm old...