The Annekenstein Monster

If there was NHL hockey this year, my Montreal Canadiens would be playing the Devils in New Jersey tonight.  Instead, my homepage’s sports section shows the game as ‘postponed’.
Sigh.

But wait.  What’s this?  The NHL 2004/2005 season IS on?  What?  It’s a simulated season from the folks at WhatIf Sports.  That’ll have to do, pig.  Checking the stats, it looks like the Habs are doing pretty good so far, tied for fourth in the Eastern Conference.

Hey, simulated sports, simulated sex nor simulated Ketchup flavour are as good as the real thing, but when you’re deprived, you’ll take what you can get.

As a public service to my loyal readership, I offer you this warning, just in time for Christmas.  It concerns a confidence scam that surfaced last year, and by all accounts, will be even more popular this year.  It is being dubbed The Christmas Shoes Scam.
This is how it works:
The scam usually is pulled at a busy department store or mall, usually at times when there are large crowds mingling.  A young child (usually, could be a trust-inspiring early teenager too) will linger around the checkout, holding an item of clothing he makes obvious he wishes to purchase.  While the item is usually a pair of womens shoes (hence the scam’s name), it can be anything really.  The main characteristic is that the item is NOT something the child would purchase for his own wardrobe.  While holding the item, the child will look sad.  This is done to lure in the victim.
It is an inactive scam, meaning that the child will wait until approached.  Once approached by a concerned (meaning: vulnerable and/or Christian) adult, the scam artist will begin with the waterworks, crying softly at first, moreso as the situation demands.  When asked what’s wrong, the child will lay the base of the scam.  Usually the child will say something to the effect that a family member (usually a Mother) is very ill, and is in fact about to die. Perhaps even this very night.
If the victim bites, then the scam artist will continue on with a story that usually implies how he’d love the dying family member to wear the article of clothing that he is buying.  He may say that, when well, the dying family member expressed delight regarding that specific piece of clothing.  Unfortunately, the child doesn’t have enough money.
If the victim has stayed this long, it is pretty much a certainty that the victim will offer to pay outright for the article of clothing.  Tearfully, the scam artist accepts the generosity and allows the transaction to occur.  With purchased item in hand, the scam artist thanks the victim, then runs off to, he says, his dying family memeber.
A day later, the child (or, if part of a Christmas Shoes gang, it’s usually the ‘guardian’ who) returns to the store and receives a full cash refund for the item.
In a busy mall at the height of Christmas shopping a good Christmas Shoes scam artist can rake in a thousand dollars a day.
Read this testimonial for an actual account from a victim:

It was almost Christmas time, there I stood in another line, tryin’ to buy that last gift or two, not really in the Christmas mood.  Standing right in front of me was a little boy waiting anxiously, pacing ’round like little boys do, and in his hands he held a pair of shoes.
His clothes were worn and old, he was dirty from head to toe.
And when it came his time to pay, I couldn’t believe what I heard him say.

“Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my Mama, please.  It’s Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size.  Could you hurry, sir, Daddy says there’s not much time.  You see she’s been sick for quite a while, and I know these shoes would make her smile.  And I want her to look beautiful if Mama meets Jesus tonight.”
He counted pennies for what seemed like years, then the cashier said, "Son, there’s not enough here". 
He searched his pockets frantically, then he turned and he looked at me.

He said “Mama made Christmas good at our house, though most years she just did without.  Tell me Sir, what am I going to do?  Somehow I’ve got to buy her these Christmas shoes.”

So I laid the money down. I just had to help him out.  I’ll never forget the look on his face when he said “Mama’s gonna look so great.” 

I knew I’d caught a glimpse of heaven’s love, as he thanked me and ran out.  I knew that God had sent that little boy to remind me just what Christmas is all about.

This guy was sucked in big time.  Let it be an example to you.  So, as a warning, please be careful this Christmas when approached for money.  It could be a scam.

Speaking of Muppets, I haven’t really enjoyed their antics much since Jim Henson died.  That they’ve carried on the characters that he voiced (that he *was*) is sad to me, but I understand, from a corporate greed angle, why it must be done.  Kermit is, quite simply, not Kermit anymore.  I cannot enjoy what these characters do or say, because I cannot see them as the entities they were.  They are impersonators.
I could handle the Dick York/Dick Seargeant switch on Bewitched because, even though they were playing the same character, Dick2 didn’t try to copy Dick1.  He played the character in his own way.
I was equally frustrated when the Warner Brothers kept the Looney Toons franchise going after Mel Blanc died.  Bugs, Daffy, et al just didn’t sound right.  I’d occasionally see some post-Mel cartoons and would get upset at the voice-work and ultimately decided not to watch any more.
Sunday, Looney Toons Back In Action was on, and I half-heartedly decided to check it out for a minute (to see how long it’d take before I got frustrated at the voices and angrily changed the channel).  Well, I was pleasantly surprised.  The new guy they got to do the voices has nailed many of them.  Daffy sounds like Daffy again.  Bugs is back to being Bugs.  Yosemite isn’t so good, but overall, I was impressed.
Enough to watch the whole movie.  Which was okay, by the way.  I’m always cheering for Brendan Fraser to succeed.

This is pretty funny.
Grover was always my favourite Muppet.  I never stopped to consider the cost of that fame and celebrity.  Grover, the monster at the end of that book wasn’t just you.  It was ego and vanity and need and the desire to be loved.  The monster at the end of that book was all of us, my friend.

When the USA won the Olympic Hockey gold medal in 1980, I was pretty much just beginning my anti-USA phase (USA, just get out!!).  Combine that with my philosophy-at-the-time that Canada makes the best hockey players, and if our best were ever allowed to compete, we’d win.   Unsurprisingly, I was less than impressed when they beat the Soviet Union, and to me, back then, the Al Michaels "Do you believe in miracles" cry was just typical American propoganda.  When those gold medalists made it to NHL teams, I was, deep down, hoping they’d fail.  Over the years, my stance hasn’t changed much.
24 years later and the movie Miracle gets released by Disney, and I think to myself "here’s a crappy, feel good movie I’ll never watch."  Well, today I watched it, and I gotta say… pretty good movie, and now that I’m more mature, I can appreciate the effort of coach Herb Brooks.
Kurt Russel plays Brooks (and I think the resemblance to Bobby Orr is phenomenal) as a tough disciplinarian with the It’ll-Never-Work! idea to combine the best of the Soviet and Canadian styles to create a hybrid of the two.  Apparently it worked.  I was most impressed with the "playing hockey" scenes.  Was expecting the typical staged moments of "action", but instead was surprised with the success they had in conveying the speed and physicality of the sport.  It looked like the actors actually had some skill.  The movie didn’t get bogged down in syrupy sub-plots with the various players, and stuck pretty much to the nuts and bolts of the events.
I give it 7 out of 10.

Fishychips at Cedars brings forth this idea for an awful tv series. SideBar.  The original inclination was for this to be a legal drama.  Yawn.  But, when I suggested sitcom with Harvey Fierstein as the judge, well, it just seems right.

Here’s what I’m thinkin’… Harvey plays a liberal-minded New York judge who, through mysterious and never-explained reasons, is made to preside over a southern state  (let’s say Georgia) county court.  His big-city point of view doesn’t mesh well with the small-town conservatives who live in the area.

Who else is in the show, and what do they play?

Finally, after however-many episodes of Extreme Boring women against men ‘strategy’, Survivor Vanna White Too has gotten interesting.  At least it was interesting for about the final fifteen minutes last night.  How boring has it been so far? How irrelevant have been the contestants?  Last night, with only 7 or 8 players left, I still didn’t recognise the woman who won the reward challenge.  Who was she?  Has she been on the island the whole time? Or, wait, was it Bug-Eyed Eliza who won that challenge?  I cannot remember, or differentiate between, some of these forgettable people.
I’ve been cheering for Twyla for a while now, and I suspect it could be her and Scout that make it to the final two. Scout is a puzzle.  She hasn’t come close to winning any challenge, yet she has situated herself as one of two (along with Twyla) who are now calling all the shots. 
I think Dead Man Walking Chris could make it to final three. Not that I particularly like him, but I’d love to see him win, based solely on him (being a man) being the butt of that mean and ignorant chicken-wing stunt in which all the women participated.
Of course, who wins ultimately depends on who wins immunities, and only now (now that Twyla and Scout have shown their hand)  will that really begin to matter.  I must say that I’m looking forward to the episode (next week, if she doesn’t win immunity) where Puffy Ami Me-Me gets the boot.  She seems like a mean and selfish person and someone I wouldn’t like in real life.
Last night’s Apprentice was fairly cut-and-paste, I thought.  Here’s the challenge, here’s the result, here’s the boardroom, here’s the firing, show over.  The hundred dollar cash work incentives and the ‘no pizza for you’ strategy seemed so wrong and stupid.  For that alone, the guy deserved to be fired.  And that Globe of Pepsi bottle they designed was simply awful looking.

From the Reality Show Red Carpet, here in downtown Whogivesashit, this is Rob MacDee reporting.

So, who saw U2 perform on Saturday Night Live last weekend?  I was up and flipping around channels at the time, and came upon them in the middle of their unexpected third performance of the evening.  I’ve since watched the complete performance of I Will Follow on the internet.  You can see it here, apparently
For those who don’t know, U2 were on Saturday Night Live last weekend and performed the usual two songs.  Then, instead of a final awful sketch, the comedians said their good-nights to us and Bono ran over to the band and they played an "unscheduled" third song.  I quote the word because, obviously the cast, crew and producers knew it was scheduled. 

After seeing it, I gotta say, my respect for U2 continues to go up and up.  Are they the greatest rock and roll band ever?  For longevity and continued relevance, I think you gotta say they are.

Their performance of the song was not special, in and of itself. It was very good, yes. But if it was a great performance, it was so in its very ordinariness.  It is what I would expect from U2.  It was rock-steady and strong. It is what rock and roll should be like.  The performance wasn’t special, but the event was.
What made it special, of course, was this was U2’s response to the hubbub surrounding SNL’s previous two weeks’ entertainers.  The Ashlee Simpson lip-synch controversy two weeks ago, and  Eminem’s rapping along with his vocal track episode last week.  This was U2 saying "look, here’s how it’s supposed to be done.  We’ll play one of our oldest songs, one we’ve played countless times, one  we should be bored-shitless with, yet we’re still ripping it as if it mattered".  But doing so in a totally unpretentious (to me) manner.

LIke them or not, U2 is a Real Band, and they keep reminding us exactly what a real band is supposed to do: sing and play and feel the music and have a great time doing it.  And in this world of pre-produced talent, that is becoming more and more a rare experience.

Or:  The Amazing Shut Up I Hate You I Want A DivoRace

At least there’s still the scenery. And the competitions.

This year’s pack of The Amazing Race contestants seems to be
rather, um, rude, selfish and immature. So much anger and hatred among the couples. There seems to be no middle-ground when it comes to anger between
team-mates. They’ll be all lovey-dovey,
then next scene they are over-the-top Pacino mad at each other. And angry at seemingly trivial things. Yes, I understand it’s a race, and there are
pressures associated with that, but, come on, people. Show each other some respect.  Not knowing whether to turn right or left at the next intersection is not reason enough to declare, in a rabid rage, a desire for divorce.

The apology between the older couple was sweet and
genuine. Really, there’s nothing to
dislike about them so far.

By the sheer outlandishness of his temper and ego, it’s
becoming quite apparent that Johnathon must be trying to create this “most
annoying reality show contestant ever” character. What a disappointment, if it’s true. It takes all the fun out of hating him. Obviously his wife is in on the act.

Other things from last night’s show:

Bolo the Monkey seems to get awfully winded for a so-called
professional athlete.

It’s true. People
falling down on their bums is funny.

Will Hellboy discover and/or announce his homosexuality
before he gets Philiminated?

The New York Girls were a pretty inept team. They deserved to go. And they did. Won’t be missed.

Who will win it all? I’m placing my bet on the team that contains actors and/or models.

Scene:  The Heavens
Lights up to reveal a few and sundry spirits, including God, lounging around on a cloud.  The Virgin Mary enters.
Virgin Mary:  Well, I’m thinking about making another appearance down on Earth.
God: Is that really necessary?  Do you really think it will help?
Virgin Mary:  The people need to be reassured.  Faith is wavering.  I can feel it.
God: (sigh)  Very well.  How will you manifest yourself?
Virgin Mary:  I’m going to show up on a grilled-cheese sandwich.
(pause)
God:  Grilled Cheese.
St. Peter:  That’s very "Warhol". 
God: Wouldn’t an appearance as, you know, a flesh-and-bone human be more convincing?  Toss a miracle or two their way and voila, you got the majority of the world absolutely convinced in us.  Simple and easy.  In and out.
Thomas:  Yeah, that worked so well with Jesus.
God: In hindsight, I don’t think it was the best timing with Jesus.  Probably the different areas of the world were too isolated from one another two thousand years ago for an effective world-wide promotional campaign like that.
Mark:  That’s what I’ve been saying the last two thousand years!  I mean, Jesus gave good sound bites, but, really, who heard him when he was there?  A few thousand people at most, and the majority of them thought he was loco.  Even with all our work after his, uh, death, the word was slow to get out.  But now, with CNN and MSN Messenger , I really think a "Jesus Appears To Save Us All" headline would take off.  Like, globally.
Luke:  As long as it doesn’t get usurped by other headlines.  Robert Blake’s trial is coming up, you know.
Mark:  I could get working on a Powerpoint presentation, if you like?
God:  That won’t be necessary, Mark.  But thank you.
Virgin Mary: Well, I really think if I manifest as a visage on a grilled cheese sandwich, that’ll grab them good, too.
Luke (dismissive):  Yeah, that’d be good.
God:  Do it if you must, Virgin Mary.  It’s your call.
Virgin Mary:  Well, I will.  I’ll appear on a grilled cheese sandwich.
(Virgin Mary exits)
Luke:  She doesn’t really "get it", does she.
Thomas:  She’s too…theatrical.
Mark:  Stunt appearances like that do more damage than good, God.  I mean, bleeding walls, cloud formations.  It’s ridiculous!
God: You know who I feel sorry for?  The poor schmucks who are unfortunate enough to see these images.  Get labelled as ‘nutso’ or ‘crazy’ and are ridiculed and persecuted for the rest of their Earth-bound lives.
Luke: All it’d take, God, for Earthly peace, is one smart visit from you.  Show ’em you’re serious, and – Bang! – we got, what, four BILLION new subscribers.  Guaranteed.
God:  Well…let’s just see how Virgin Mary’s grilled cheese sandwich works out.
Luke:  You’re the boss.
Lights down.