Marci Labrouche

-Jason Emanuel

Posted by Audiegrl

TPM/Rachel Slajda—At yesterday’s tea party rally on Capitol Hill, at least one protester brandished a large graphic photograph of the victims of the Dachau Nazi concentration camp, comparing health care reform to Nazi policies. Today, Rep. Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) spokesman called the photograph “inappropriate.”

Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) has also condemned the poster.

Cantor, in an interview today with Bloomberg, also offered some criticism of radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s comparison of President Obama to Adolf Hitler.

“Do I condone the mention of Hitler in any discussion about politics?” said Cantor, who is the only Jewish Republican in Congress. “No, I don’t, because obviously that is something that conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”

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PART 1

This Rihanna’s full 20/20 interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer. In this interview Rihanna goes in full detail about what took place the night she was abused at the hands of Chris Brown.

In my opinion, Rihanna came across poised, controlled, articulate and intelligent. I was impressed by the way she handled the interview and really didn’t do Chris Brown as bad as I think she could’ve; she only stated facts so I think she did him favor by not going in.

Props: yardie

Part 2 after the jump

PART 2

*SPOILER ALERTS*  The Jews’ spaceship stalls in the airspace just above Warsaw. When it becomes apparent that the ship is no longer capable of transporting the Jews back to their Promised Land, the humans move the Jews, whom they disdainfully refer to as Prawns, into a big ghetto called The District. To accommodate rapid population increases among the Prawns, many more Districts are established throughout Europe. The Jews start to escape from the Districts, disguising themselves as humans by eating non-kosher food and learning to speak European languages. The Nazis decide they’ve had enough: they start implementing the Ultimate Solution to resolve “the Prawn problem.” Prawn Hunters scour the countryside rounding up the renegades.

Brad Pitt is a Nazi. One day, while clearing all the Jews from District 9 and sending them to “resettlement camps,” Brad comes across a secret moyel hideout and, while inspecting the “weapons,” accidentally circumcises himself. Brad considers cutting off the offending member but can’t make himself do it. Pretty soon the “infection” starts to spread: horrified, Brad finds himself gradually transforming from human into Jew. After awhile, though, he realizes that he kind of likes his new Jewishness. Pocketing the moyel’s knife, Brad starts roaming the countryside killing Nazis. The ones he lets go he circumcises.

Eventually Brad joins up with a ragtag group of American Jews. Together they form a vigilante posse known as the Prawn Basterds. One day they come across a Jew in hiding who has figured out a way to get the Jewish spaceship, still stalled over Warsaw, operational again. It turns out that the ship’s movie projector somehow jettisoned the fourth reel, which fell into a Warsaw junk heap where it was torn to bits by scavengers. Without the fourth reel, which contains all the footage describing the return voyage, the ship came to a standstill. Word reaches Brad that Louie B. Mayer and David O. Selsnick have painstakingly reconstructed the lost footage. The Prawn Basterds undertake the perilous voyage to Hollywood, where they secure the precious fourth reel remake. They head back to Europe.

By the time they reach Warsaw the legendary Prawn Basterds have been decimated, leaving only Brad and one Jew, whose name is CHRISTopher, to fulfill the mission. The two of them become trapped in a movie theater with hundreds of Nazis, including Goebbels, Goering, Himmler, and Hitler. Brad, who is able to use his prawnized member to operate a super-sophisticated Jewish weapon, burns the theater to the ground, killing everyone in the theater, regrettably including CHRISTopher. Somehow Brad manages to escape; he recedes heartbroken into the war-torn Warsaw squalor.

Three days later, Brad casts his eyes skyward in astonishment to watch CHRISTopher miraculously rising from the smouldering pile of rubble. He carries under his arm the canister containing the Fourth Reel, which somehow survived the theatrical holocaust. He ascends bodily to the space ship, puts the reel into the projector, turns it on, and sits down at the controls. Brad, awestruck, watches the great airship rumble to life and veer off toward the southeast. Is CHRISTopher escaping, or will he return with a rescue party to ferry the rest of the Prawns home? The movie ends well-positioned for a sequel.

I hope I didn’t leave anything out…

My wife and I are latecomers to Friday Night Lights – we started watching the first season on Universal HD last winter and fell in love with the show’s sense of place, understated but compelling performances, and naturalistic dialogue. We heard that season 2 was disappointing, but we quite enjoyed it on DVD over the past month. I know that many fans found the Landry/Tyra plotline too unrealistic and out of step with the show’s naturalistic glimpse of working-class life – however, we both thought that it fit with the milieu sufficiently, and that the story emphasized the emotional impact the events had on the characters, which is the show’s strength.

Season 3 has come to NBC after its pre-run on DirectTV – I’d read praise for this season as a return to form, after the abrupt end to s2 caused by the writer’s strike. But after two episodes, I must say I’m quite disappointed. Spoilers beneath the fold if you haven’t caught up with NBC’s airing yet.

The first problem is that it feels far too much like a reboot. The dangling plots from season 2 are either ignored – Jason Street’s potential fatherhood, Tyra’s emergence as volleyball powerhouse and Tami’s move into coaching, Smash’s suspension and loss of scholarship, Tami’s old boyfriend, Santiago’s existence – or glossed over as irrelevant – Lyla’s relationship with the young preacher and Christianity itself, Matt’s attempt to move on from Carlotta.

Obviously this is in reaction to the strike, where 1/3 of season 2 was abandoned. I’m sure that NBC pushed the producers to make the show accessible to new viewers, so continuity was downplayed. And I’m sure part of our reaction is tied to having just finished watching s2 on DVD, with those dangling storylines fresh in our minds. But nonetheless, it feels like a slap in the face to fans who have stuck with the show and care about these characters.

Even more problematic are some of the new storylines moving forward. Tami becoming principal feels like a highly conventional television move – when you run out of stories, change a character’s job (even without rational explanation) to create new conflicts and situations. This move has a long tradition, especially in 1970/80s sitcoms like Welcome Back, Kotter and The Facts of Life. (And FNL has embraced the similar TV move for high school shows by having students perpetually remain seniors, as Riggins, Lyla, and Tyra all seem to have been held back for two years!) FNL should be better than this, as television storytelling has progressed to a point where viewers expect more from a program in terms of continuity than we got 30 years ago.

It’s not just that Tami becoming principal is so conventional – it’s also completely out of line with her character. In season 2, Tami is stressed out trying to juggle life as a mother of both an infant and teenager, and work is a refuge for sanity away from the kids – but her ambivalence between her roles as a mother and professional are in constant conflict. As a parent and professional, this experience is palpable, and Connie Britton’s performance captures all of the guilt, pride, stress, and regret that goes along with life as a working parent. So why would she suddenly take on a higher-stress leadership position (for which she is unqualified and probably unlicensed, by the way)? And in the first two episodes at least, her parental guilt has been ignored in lieu of professional ambitions for school reform, mostly to contrive conflict between Principal Taylor and Coach Taylor.

Clearly characters can change, and perhaps these stories will become more nuanced and less rote in coming weeks. But this misstep speaks to an important dynamic of serialized storytelling: a series needs to establish expectations for what a show might deliver, and either hold true to those norms or effectively cue the audience to the new rules. FNL has built its fanbase through a commitment to naturalistic, low-key storytelling, making the true-to-life issues faced by families the stuff of gripping character drama. More than those plots, however, the show is about these people – I feel like I know Tami well enough that I doubt that she’d actually want to be principal at this point in her life. And even if there is a rationale for it, I want to see it, not just be told about it out of the blue. I accepted Landry’s violence because it grew out of his love for Tyra, and it played out in a way that emphasized character drama over contrived crime plotting. But this promotion seems motivated solely by the network, not the character.

It’s hard not to compare FNL to two other shows returning this month – both Lost and Battlestar Galactica have come back to the air with surprising new stories to tell, but in ways that are true to their established expectations, moods, and genres. I’m willing to forgive FNL for story inconsistencies, discontinuities, and even the fudging of students’ academic years, while I would rail against BSG or Lost for much more minor continuity infractions. But FNL is all about the characters and their relationships, so my expectations are judged on those terms. And as of now, FNL is falling short of those expectations – let’s hope things turn around soon. And if any readers watched the DirectTV run, should I have faith (without spoilers, of course)?

roland emmerich is afraid of fatwa(link)

i’m not into religion bashing. just not my thing. what people choose to believe in is their choice. i’m a practicing christian (who, admittedly, fails at it a lot), so i understand the need to believe in someone/something. i also understand people who get a little testy when others bring religion up, especially in cases of people pushing the issue when it’s not warranted — i once picked a fight with two unsolicited mormons who came by the house and told me jesus was wrong.

what?

so, when a coworker asked me to sing imagine by john lennon with her at a karaoke joint, i declined. i didn’t want to imagine a world where my God didn’t exist. sorry, no thanks. and i didn’t want to imagine a world without faith, hope, or beliefs because someone felt offended by some joker with a few screws loose who decides to wage a war in some god’s name. faith, along with hope and love, is a human right. let’s imagine people didn’t love. then, we wouldn’t have people like that astronaut(link) who took a 900-mile road trip wearing a diaper to kidnap her lover’s other lover.

we should ban love. it hurts people too.

there has been a tremendous backlash against religion. when i say religion, i mean christianity. nobody says buddha’s name in vain. that’s not a swastika on bad religion’s cross buster t-shirt. when yoko ono ripped pages out of a religious book, it wasn’t the koran. (she did apologize somewhat by saying she was spreading the message of God, but a part of me thinks she’s being sarcastic.)

and when the movie 2012 comes out, you’ll get to see the vatican roll on top of believers, and you’ll also see the christ the redeemer statue disintegrate because roland emmerich of independence day, godzilla, and the day after tomorrow fame is against organized religion. he is, however, afraid of fatwas which means he won’t be killing a bunch of muslims in some sort of ironic twist in his newest movie.

i see a lot of ironies in this. emmerich is taking advantage of a situation where people of a specific religion (christianity), who are for the most part peaceful, won’t do more than protest him for being hateful towards their beliefs. after all is said and done, emmerich might get a few calls and rude emails from some concerned christians, but he won’t, however, tempt the muslim religious leaders into ordering his death via fatwa. nope. emmerich and his writer didn’t want to offend any muslim leaders who couldn’t see a fictional movie for what it really is. i am in agreement that no one should die because of a movie, and i’m not going to call emmerich a coward for not wanting to offend muslims. i will call call him a coward for offending everyone else who believes in something. we are all entitled to our own opinions, and we are free under the first amendment to express them. we’re also free to hold others accountable when they use those rights for selfish gain.

probably the most ironic thing about this is that the same amendment that gives emmerich the right to offend my faith gave me the right to have faith.

Programme du jour : Shopping et retour de Maman.

 

Ca y’est, je suis en week-end. Je suis à la crèche du lundi au jeudi, alors évidemment, le vendredi, c’est plus “cool”.
Je me réveille à 7h45, je prends mon bain, déjeune avec Célya et Papa, on se prépare, et à 10h30, je pars avec Célya à l’Oracle pendant que Papa travaille.

Pendant toute la durée (Comme les macarons ! humour !) de cette balade shopping,  je suis vraiment adorable. Je pousse ma petite poussette, et donne même 2 ou 3 pièces à un musicien, qui me gratifie de quelques compliments.

Il est 13h quand nous nous arrêtons au restaurant pour déjeuner. Je me régale de baked beans, de saucisses et d’une glace.

De retour à la maison vers 14h30, je demande à ce que Papa me mette à la sieste. Je m’endors pendant 2h30. Célya est obligée de venir me réveiller, nous avons rendez-vous à 18h à Reading, avec Maman qui rentre du Luxembourg.