As the year draws to a close, I thought it would be fun to share with you the past year's obsessions within the Scannon family household. Some are old, and some are new, and some are exclusively ours. 10.Legend Of The Seeker Around here television watching isn't a form of mindless entertainment, it's a family activity where anything and everything is up for ridicule. Case in point:Legend of the Seeker, a Hercules/Xena hybrid with a bit of Lord of the Rings thrown in as well. Featuring a hero with anachronistic hair, a cleavage bearing female lead, and a wizard who bears more than a passing resemblance to Todd Rundgren, who, ironically, once titled an album A Wizard, A True Star(bonus points if you can connect a wizard attack to a Rundgren song title, it helps to have somewhat a familiarity with his canon) Cheesy yes, but boundless interactive entertainment for those who enjoy riffing on bad television. 9.DEER While still not equaling earlier enthusiasm, when everything deer was dear to their hearts, my kids can still be persuaded to take a walk through Huff Park, where these magnificent mammals may be observed, running freely through the thicket, like a bad Ted Nugent song (is there any other kind?) 8.The Simpsons While it may not have jumped the shark as of yet, America's longest running animated prime time series is circling the cage. And with older and far more superior seasons still in syndication, one is sure to find an episode you haven't as yet seen, at least in a while. So we still make time around here to catch it while we can. 7.You Tube From watching their Cousin Nick do a bad Christopher Walken impersonation, to watching an endless choice of Green Day videos, spending time at YouTube is always a choice for this family. Watch this Todd Rundgren Beatles homage/parody "I Just want To Touch You":
6.House, MD A drama about a drug abusing doctor? How is that not appropriate for children. While not our collective favorite show, it is fun to watch for fans of A Bit of Laurie and Fry. 5.Tropic Thunder"These head movies make my eyes rain."
4.The Dark Knight-The best movie of the year,the best Batman movie ever, and the most superlative super hero movie. Director Christopher Nolan takes another step up. Plus, that dead guy did a good job as The Joker. Seriously, someone who had seen the movie recently at work commented on how dark the movie was, and how they could see how the role may have driven Heath Ledger to overdose on drugs. But watching the movie, to me, it seemed that this was an actor having the time of his life in the ultimate role of his life. 3.WiiGiven as a gift from Grandma last Christmas. Much better than the XBox, the Xbox 360, the Wii forces more body movement (and therefore, more isometric exercise) from those who play. Whether it be at their mother's house, or on the occasion when they bring it here, nothing occupies the boy's time more than their Wii. 2.The Beatles-Once, it was the boys main obsession. Now, it has fallen by the wayside as the boys found a new band that is actually writing recording and releasing new material in this millennium. Still, our vinyl collection(s) picked up more favorites from the Fabs this year. And that makes 1.Green Day number one on the list, as the boys scramble to have the most Green Day CDs in their collections. And, it has led to endless arguments about who is the better band, Green Day, or Butthole Surfers? One thing for certain, with the release of a new Green Day album in 2009, they're sure to remain at the top of the list. But hey, at least it's not the Jonas Brothers.
I grew up in a simpler time. Computers were still gigantic and expensive items not yet developed for home use, television was broadcast through the air, which meant sometimes, you couldn't pull a signal to watch your favorite show, and the rotary phone was still the main means of communication for most Americans. While in elementary school, with my father at work everyday and my mother spending most of her time in the hospital, we were left unsupervised, and with no one to guide us, were introduced to the prank phone call. Calling places to see if the carried Prince Albert in a can, or random houses to see if their refrigerators were running was a source of amusement we never tired of, safe in the knowledge that if we ended the phone call quick enough, there'd be no way to trace it back to us. We'd scan the phone book, seeking out oddly named people, and make prank phone calls based upon them. (pity the poor widow of one Caesar Dusterwinkle, who must have received hundreds of phone calls from fourth, fifth and sixth graders at Mary A. White elementary school pretending to be elves asking if Caesar was home) But that was then. Nowadays, with caller ID and cell phones, prank calling has been replaced by the robocall and the junk call. A person would have to be fairly stupid to call the police and threaten to shoot the next snowplow driver to come down your street. Having spent much of my teenage years in a rural area where a visit from the snowplow was as frequent as a full moon, a snowplow driving down our street would have been a welcome sign, especially for my dad, the only one who had a truck and would have to drive into town to buy cigarettes beer and food for some of the neighbors less daring to take the daunting trek down unplowed roads. And I knew that I'd rather have to shovel out chunks of snow from the end of my driveway than have to spend the winter cooped up in the house with my Dad and stepmom with out any weed.
"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."
-Lt. Gen. Antonio Taguba Dick Cheney has been making the rounds lately, openly admitting he is a war criminal who willfully and wantonly violated the Geneva Conventions. There doesn't need to be any investigation by the DoJ, when someone confesses on national television, I believe that's all the evidence needed. However, it's unlikely that Cheney will actually be prosecuted for being a war criminal, something that puts him in the same league as Pol Pot or Adolph Hitler, because he is wealthy, and a member of the corpocracy, the people who decide that you should go to jail for smoking a joint, but for someone who authorized the wholesale slaughter of 1,297,997 Iraq civilians, and the torture of people who may be in US custody because they were sold to the US for bounties as opposed to being linked to al qaeda, 9/11, or even are any kind of terrorist. Take Bernie Madoff, who made off with $50 billion in fraud. His ass should be sitting in jail right now, but he's not. He's under "house arrest" in one of the mansions that his scams bought him. Poor guy! That these people should go unpunished is unconstitutional. We are guaranteed equal protection under the law, but from where I'm sitting, things don't look all that equal. In fact, it almost would appear the bigger the crime, the more likely it is that you will see any jail time. This is to encourage our children to think big, even when it comes to crime.
The Republican party was at a loss following the last presidential election, and seeking a leader. A number of the people in the party chose to rally around Sarah Palin, not because of any good reason, rather, because she said things that they wanted to hear. like "Drill baby, drill!" Meanwhile, in the past election cycle, Ron Paul was ridiculed because he said things they didn't want to hear, such as things stated in the above video. The American dream of unlimited growth is unsustainable. With a finite amount of resources available in this country, only so much value can be ascribed to it. The only way the truly wealthy can acquire more wealth is if the take it from the collective rest of us in a grand, glorified Ponzi Scheme disguised as a free market. The defense contractors and brokers and other criminal members of the corpocracy are looting the country, printing us up a bunch of worthless paper that becomes less valuable with every CEO that gets a bailout, until one day, all that will be left is a bunch of beer swilling television watchers wondering "Wha happened?" as they stand waving a flag that used to stand for something.
George W Bush paid another "surprise" visit to Iraq, on his farewell tour, where he was the target of a pair of shoes, hurled at him by an irate journalist. No, it wasn't an American "journalist" who barely had the temerity to hurl uncomfortable questions at Bush in eight years, let alone a pair of uncomfortable shoes. Bush blamed the US-led invasion on Saddam, you know, because he was asking for it, standing over there in Baghdad being all alive and crap. Really, was it Saddam who forged the Nigerian yellow cake uranium documents? Was it Saddam who stood before the UN and claimed a mobile weather balloon inflation trailer was in reality a mobile chemical weapons lab? Was it Saddam who claimed to have WMD? (These are all rhetorical questions and if you don't know the answer by now, there is no hope for you) Bush now claims that "America is safer" since the invasion, a spurious claim since Iraq never posed any threat to the US in the first place. So what is America safer from? Economic collapse? Crumbling infrastructure? No, America will not be entirely safe until you are back on the ranch at Crawford, doing the one job you were competent at: clearing brush.
Everyday I face the daunting task of going to a job I despise while simultaneously being thankful I still have one. I know there is no bailout for me, when that job is gone, it's gone. But then I think of those less fortunate than me. Sure, I may have it tough, but I've weathered worse storms than this and survived. It's like Bob Dylan said, when you got nothin' you got nothin' to lose. What can we do to help those whose livelihood is teetering on the abyss? SPONSOR AN EXECUTIVE
I can imagine it must be confusing for most Americans this time of year. On the one hand, you want to decorate your yard with the tackiest kitsch you can find. On the other hand, you don't want to let your guard down in your love for America, lest the terrorists catch us unaware. Still yet, you want to show your support for the troops so much that you're happy they're spending the holidays away from their family mired down in an endless pointless war with no exit strategy. Well, forget about all that "Peace on Earth, Goodwill To Men" crap, it doesn't apply to indigenous brown people anyway, and stick the above "Soldier Santa" in your front yard, because nothing lets you say everything you need to say more than an eight foot tall light-up inflatable Santa dressed in desert camo fatigues. See you dirty heathenistic Ramadan lovin' terrorists. We're going to win because we got Satan Santa on our side. He sees you when you're sleeping and he knows when you're awake, (but just like God, he can't really stop you from strapping yourself with explosives and blowing us up)and he knows when you've been bad or a slave to the capitalistic system (good). And you can sleep better at night knowing that you did your durndest to keep America safe on this the Holiest of nights, right after the Fourth of July. Father Christmas-The Kinks
I believe we are now living in a corporate idiocracy, where the masses of television watchers are kept distracted from the decay of our country by tacky voyeurism sponsored by the same people that are ripping us off.
