The Sound of the Crowd

1. Meanwhile, in North Carolina…

2. George W. Bush comes clean.

3. John McCain, late-night TV comic.

If it isn’t looking like a relatively good day to be pro-gay and anti-”religious” right hate. Of course, it’s always a good day to be pro and anti those things, but what I mean is:

1. In the Texas Legislature Senfronia Thompson, a black representative from Houston, recently spoke against that body putting a anti-gay marriage measure into the state constitution.

She said,

“Members, I’m a Christian and a proud Christian. I read the good book and do my best to live by it. I have never read the verse where it says, ‘Gay people can’t marry.’ I have never read the verse where it says, ‘Thou shalt discriminate against those not like me.’ I have never read the verse where it says, ‘Let’s base our public policy on hate and fear and discrimination.’ Christianity to me is love and hope and faith and forgiveness — not hate and discrimination.”

And a lot more. Then, of course, they passed the amendment. This is what I mean by relatively. But, there is reason to take heart–and it’s coming from the seemingly most unlikely of places…

2. The Kraft Foods company, not just content with featuring that promoter-of-the-homosexual-agenda Spongebob Squarepants on their labels, have issued a clear, unambiguous statement about their commitment to diversity and the fact that they will not knuckle under to criticism from the “religious” right for it.

This may be the coolest thing the Kraft Foods company has done since they stopped sponsoring “The Great Gildersleeve.” Damn it, I feel the need to go buy some baloney and pasta…

In the spirit of “I wouldn’t pay to see it in a theater, or even rent it as a DVD, but it was on Showtime on-demand,” I gave the movie Uptown Girls a try last night/this morning.

Roger Ebert often writes in reviews about movies with characters who deserve better than the cookie-cutter screenplay they’re forced into, and that’s the case here. Brittany Murphy and Dakota Fanning have some charming moments together, but their transitions are unmotivated; occuring only because it’s that page number in the screenplay.

And any time the film tries to deal with any other relationships… well, let me put it this way. There’s a character in this movie who is supposed to be Brittany Murphy’s best friend. We know this because they keep telling each other so.

“I’m your best friend! Why would I ever let you down?”
“You know, as your best friend, it’s my responsibility to…”

Yet I tell you there is not a single moment in the entire film that made me think these women even liked each other. Which, speaking as someone who’s written a couple of things about friends and friendships, I hope an audience will at least get the feeling my characters do…

Weirdest of all the director, Boaz Yakin, seems to have had some sort of bizarre fetish. On at least three occasions in this movie (including the obligitory rich-girl-who’s-never-done-laundry-in-her-life-goes-to-the-laundromat-and-makes-a-mess-of-things scene), they make a point of showing us Murphy taking off her underpants. You know, the reach-under-her-dress (or long shirt) thing, so nothing is exposed to camera, but we know she’s “going commando.” Ooh, sexy.

Lord knows I have no objections to the thought of Murphy walking around bare-assed (even less so after this movie–she really is very attractive) but three times? Even in a PG-13 movie?

Feministing on the republican idea that “there wouldn’t be wanton spring break sex if campus health centers didn’t provide birth control.”

I can see it now: Girls Gone Wild…because they had birth control! “I was going to just catch up on my studies, but now that I have emergency contraception I feel the sudden urge to enter a wet t-shirt contest”

…except premature ejaculation, but I hear that’s coming quickly.*
(more…)

You know, there are times when I swear I could almost see the appeal of reading only the right-wing nut blogs, or the Wall Street Journal editorial page or Washington Times, and watching Fox News.

It must be nice to live in a world where we went to war against a real threat, for good and sufficect reason, with an adequate number of troops that were properly equppied and trained. Where Senators actually do share my values. Where a dependence on oil is only our birthright.

I mean, if I could choose not to wake up to a world where we’re aiding and abetting the torture of Americans, don’t you think I would?

As you may have seen, guilty musical pleasure/sex symbol Kylie Minogue was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and has undergone a lumpectomy. Now, while I do not wholly share the fascination many of my English and/or gay brethren have with Kylie (with a handful of exceptions), I wish her well.

After all, my own mother underwent a masectomy. That said, is it wrong that when reading this item–

“We women should remember that we are much more than just breasts’

–my immidiate thought was “Well, of course Kylie’s more than just breasts…she’s a spectacular ass, as well?”

A couple of Star Wars fans trying to make their own little home movie version decided that the best way to recreate the light saber effect would be to use fluorescent tubes filled with gasoline, which they then set on fire.

They are now in the hospital listed in critical condition.

Like I say, it’d be funny, if…

It’s been a bad week or two for voice people. Yesterday we had the news about Howard Morris (about whom Mark has a funny story here). Today we learn that Thurl Ravenscroft, best known as the voice of Tony the Tiger in the Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes commercials, has died at the age of 91.

I can’t think of anything to add to Mark’s obit, but as a lover of great voices (to say nothing of great names), I do want to take note of Ravenscroft’s passing. So I’ll just take the coward’s way out and quote a couple big hunks of Mark’s with a link to the rest. Here he is:

His rich, bass voice was also known to audiences from his many years as a singer, plus you could hear him all over Disneyland. (That’s Thurl singing, “Grim, Grinning Ghosts” in the Haunted Mansion, and one of the busts along that ride was fashioned to look like him.) He also sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” on the animated TV special, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and appeared on hundreds of records and radio shows and other cartoons over the years.

Thurl was, in a way, the oldest working cartoon voice actor in the business. During the thirties, he was heard on radio as part of several different singing groups that eventually came to be known as The Sportsmen and later, he was in The Mellomen. One of his groups recorded voice tracks for a couple of Warner Brothers cartoons, such as the 1939 Sioux Me. Soon after, he began appearing in shorts for Mr. Disney, such as The Nifty Nineties (1941) and Springtime for Pluto (1944). Walt evidently liked the Ravenscroft sound because not only was he heard throughout the theme parks but he was also a voice in Dumbo, Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, Mary Poppins and many more.

(ETA: I just looked up Ravenscroft on IMDB and among those “many more” include a couple of my favorites. He was a voice of the Wickersham brothers in the underrated (next to the Grinch) Horton Hears A Who special, and an uncredited goblin/background voice in Rankin/Bass’ The Hobbit.)

The rest of Mark’s emotional remembrance is here.

But here’s Hoffmania on the deal that was made to avert the “nuclear option.” To me it looks like one of those “bipartisan” things that kneels to one side and bows to the other, pleasing niether.

In other words, I pretty much agree with Jesse Taylor at Pandagon:

“For all the talk of constitutional protection and constitutional assault, this honestly just feels like the nonconfrontational guy at work calming down everyone long enough to leave for the evening and come back the next day – nothing’s solved, and if the Supreme Undead Court decides to stick around past the next election cycle, it renders any agreement necessarily moot.”

Oliver Willis, on the other hand, seems more convinced this was a win for Democrats.