The regular pressures of life & work have prevented me from putting anything "Irrelevant & Crappy" together in a while. I've been dealing with a crush of things, such as the Fifth Circle of Hell (also known as the Department of Motor Vehicles), know from sea to shining sea as the very model of government efficiency.

But my pop-culture antennae popped up with a new Entertainment Weekly that purports to name the 25 greatest science fiction films & television shows since 1982. In a previous "TIC" diary, we dissected the huge amounts of "FAIL" in another set of EW lists put out recently (a greatest films list without 'The Shawshank Redemption'?).

So that brings me to the question of the night; What is the best Science Fiction ever? Hey at least it's not a VP or "the sky is falling" diary.....

Ok, this will probably get torn to shreds, and my feelings will not be hurt.

The point I hope to make in this diary:
Due to advances in technology and culture no matter who is president their actions will be attacked/and viewed as an impeachable offense by 1/2 the population.

It started with Nixon and has gotten more pronounced as time has gone on.

I doubt it is because the quality of the presidents has gotten any better or worse. I mean they've always been pretty constant, I would think.

<More after the break>

It's been a great long while since I've done one of these, but I thought it might be interesting for a Saturday evening I'm stuck at home. As some of you may already know, I like writing diaries about pop culture. While some claim it rots people's brains, I think it offers a glimpse of Humanity that can sometimes explain other "relevant" issues. So that's brings me to this diary's question of the night: Which movies & television shows are keeping your attention?

Every time you watch TV you feed the beast. You help legitimize the view of the world at it is presented on television. Television is filled with sexist imagery and messages. It's filled with racist stereotypes. Now and then when I'm visiting someone and I watch some TV, I'm always shocked at just how bad it is-- especially the sexism-- When you don't watch it every day these things jump out at you more.

Obama's latest "celebrity" ad, in my opinion, is WWAAYY off the mark. Some Obama supporters love it. But I think the latest Obama ad is a BIG mistake, a waste of money, and a lost opportunity.

Here is a link to the Huffingtonpost article on the ad, which includes video:

Obama's newest TV commercial

What do you think? I'll explain under the fold why I don't like it.

I recently added this comment to a haiku thread:

my cable's turned off
it's wonderful how much the
silence refreshes.

Well, my cable's still turned off, and that leaves me to ponder the prospect of life without TV.

This is not a diary, so much as it is a request for a diary. As I am — like most of us — just an armchair media analyst, I'd love to hear from somebody who has experience with and knowledge about the process of creating TV ads for major political campaigns.

I'm pulling my hair out and you should be, too.  Wrigley has commissioned hip hop performers (I'm not going to call them artists anymore) to re-make their jingles.  And then releasing them as songs.  Putting them on albums.  Watching them rise to No. 4 on the Billboard chart.  All  before revealing they are, in fact, delivery systems for gum.  

The campaign was conceived and executed by Mr. Stoute, a former senior executive at Interscope Records who counts rapper Jay-Z as a partner in his business. The idea was to connect the hit song and the jingle in listener's minds. That way, Mr. Stoute says, "by the time the new jingle came out, it was already seeded properly within popular culture."

There are a ton of folks out there whose expertise in marketing, advertising and sociology (not to mention law) far exceeds my own, so I hope you all chime in about this ridiculous development.  It makes my skin crawl to watch the gasping behemoth that is the modern music business (multinational corporations) further pervert an already herpetic art.

What better way to waste time & brain cells than pondering nostalgically about useless crap? In this case, the best & worst music videos of yore.

Oh, Mickey what a pity you don't understand
You take me by the heart, when you take me by the hand
Oh, Mickey you're so pretty, can't you understand
It's guys like you, Mickey
Oh, what'cha do Mickey, do Mickey,
Don't break my heart Mickey

Now that I have that song stuck in your head the rest of the night.....

A bit of Media News from the New York Observer by way of Huffington Post. Apparently David Gregory's show on MSNBC, "Celebrity White House Squares", er, wait, "Race to the White House" (which, according to the Observer's story, the New Republic  called, 'Intergalactic Nancy Grace') isn't doing so hot on MSNBC.

I wasn't going to do another one of these this week, but since there was a bit of fluff happening, I thought it might be fun. Plus, I had some free time to waste.

The standard warning for those of you who've never seen one of these before: If you would like to see some of the latest entertainment news, celebrity gossip and odd crap making the rounds, keep reading. However, if you are easily offended by half-nude men & women or other such things, you might want to stop right now.

You've been warned.

I know my limits. I leave the relevant & serious issues like "Purity" & John McCain's teeth for others to ponder. No, here we contemplate the questions that arise from the fluff of life, while hopefully having a little fun. So in addition to the usual stuff, I thought I would throw a question on the table tonight.

Like many of you, I decided to have fun during the 4th of July holiday. At a party thrown by some friends, I met someone. She's smart, funny, and very hot, basically everything a heterosexual male could ask for. We had a good time, but there is one issue. It wasn't until later that I found out she's 19. I'm in my late 20s & maybe it's a sign of me starting to feel old as I approach 30, but there is something just a tad odd about going out with someone who a short time ago was worrying about Homecoming & a Prom dress. Although I'm sure she might feel a bit strange if she knew I was on a website as "Rimjob" posting gossip about Lindsay Lohan.

So all of this led me to wonder whether people think there is an age, a point of no return, where it gets "creepy" to date someone 18 or 19? Well, enough about my hangups, on to the crap.....

For those of a certain age, you may remember Schoolhouse Rock's educational shorts. They aired on weekend mornings during the 70's and 80's, and tried to inflict some learning on us reluctant cartoon watchers... here are a few independence themed ones, my favorite first.

The Preamble

Hey, do you know about the U.S.A.?
Do you know about the government?
Can you tell me about the Constitution?
Hey, learn about the U.S.A.

In 1787 I'm told
Our founding fathers did agree
To write a list of principles
For keepin' people free.

On Thursday I promised to have this damn thing ready by Friday night. However, the fickle finger of fate intervened, and made that impossible by occupying my time with other matters for the last 3 days. And like some of my better moments in life (i.e. like cramming a semester's worth of organic chemistry inside my brain in a 7 hour period), I have somehow pulled it together to give you this... Crap.

The standard warning for those of you who've never seen one of these before: If you would like to see some of the latest entertainment news, celebrity gossip and odd crap making the rounds, keep reading. However, if you are easily offended by half-nude men & women or other such things, you might want to stop right now.

You've been warned.

Anybody got some extra cash they’d like to invest?  I’m thinking of a good idea for a new sitcom on television.  "Jack (?) and Jill (?) Go to Congress" or "Jack and Jill Go Up the Hill".

This is just a short diary - it's not meant to be a serious one, just a thought of mine.

N.B. There may be factual errors here.  It is based on memory, and the details are less important to the narrative than you would like them to be.  In other words, feel free to correct mistakes, but please don't freak out about them.

In the autumn of 1975 NBC's Saturday Night debuted (it was not called Saturday Night Live, as Howard Cosell's show that debuted that same year was called "Saturday Night Live").  I was too young to stay up that late -- I had just turned 13 that summer.  But I happened to turn on the tv in my room three weeks after the debut and saw the end of the local news, and the opening of the show with Candice Bergen -- that was the Land Shark.  I was in awe.  

Oh my, it's been a good bit since I've done one of these diaries. It's always like piecing together different sources for a term paper with this damn thing, and over the past two weeks the phone would either ring or something else would come up that required my attention. And so without further ado, let me see if I remember how to do this.

The standard warning for those of you who've never seen one of these before: If you would like to see some of the latest entertainment news, celebrity gossip and odd crap making the rounds, keep reading. However, if you are easily offended by half-nude men & women or other such things, you might want to stop right now.

You've been warned.

If I had to invoke one cause above all others for the mess we are in now, I'd go back to this classic:  Marshall McLuhan's first book:

Few people know that Marshall McLuhan's first book, published in 1951, is completely devoted to the phenomenon of advertising. Although popular in the 1960s, The Mechanical Bride is difficult to obtain nowadays

 Marshall McLuhan  was a folk hero to many in the 1960s but his fame was well earned.  This book from 1951 was an eye opener even if it failed to change the course of what it sought to warn us about He was a modern prophet and his legacy of ideas needs to be read and reread right now.  Look below the break and I'll make my case.