play the lottery = set your money on fire

your chances of winning most multi-state lotteries vary between 80 million and 120 million to 1. that's a number high enough that most people can't even imagine it. lottery organizations count on that vagueness to sucker mostly poor & middle class folks into spending a sizable portion of their income for nothing every week.

the odds that you will become infected with flesh-eating bacteria is 1 in 1 million - 120 times more likely than winning the lottery.

how many people do you know that have been hit by lightning? you are 45 times more likely to die from being hit by lightning than to win.

finally, according to space.com, you are 450,000 times more likely to die from an asteroid collision in 2029.

but your strong desire to win - that is, your gambling addiction ("i only spend x dollars a week. i only buy them for entertainment. i can stop any time i want." see how pathetic you sound?) is why almost every state now has a lottery: it's a proven source of revenue, and states use 40% - 70% of it for their general funds.

you're not alone: lotteries are an addiction for 1 out of 3 people. it's yet another fine example of the monkey mind at work. as far as we're concerned, the state might as well be selling heroin.

in memorium: the police

on 8/7/08, the final police tour will end. after that, andy, stewart, & sting will officially disband (something they never got around to doing 25 years ago, when they originally stopped working together). sting is the reason why; although he seemed to enjoy playing with andy when we saw him at pine knob (or whatever it's called these days), he has already said that he has no interest in writing more police songs, or in appearing together as the police following that august performance.

indeed. by all indications, this tour is a gift to andy & stewart - sort of a going away/semi-retirement present. and why not? andy is in his 60's; sting & stewart are well into their 50's. all look their age (sting could still beat the crap out of bruce willis), but we're pleased to report that their chops are intact (unlike a poorly rehearsed performance at their rock & roll hall of fame induction). this wasn't some sad, money-grubbing reunion gig played by has-beens - this was a band at the peak of their powers, even playing new arrangements of favorite songs sans backup singers or other visible means of support. 3 instruments, 3 very different men, 2 hours of memories, and 15,000 fans dancing & singing in the michigan night.

they even hit the big O during andy's so lonely guitar solo - something that you very rarely hear bands strive for, these days (and which we're pretty sure that half of them have never even heard of). something bigger than the sum of their parts.

when i was 19 or so, the band that i was with at the time - lyghthouse - added every police number that we could to our sets (along with my first, fumbling attempts at original songs). unlike the queen, billy joel, cars, and ac/dc covers that we played, police numbers were a stretch, from stewart's reggae-influenced rhythms to andy's fx-heavy gypsy guitar and sting's offbeat bass parts & stratospheric vocals, less is more became a musical mantra that i still strive to follow. (plus the songs were a lot of fun, guaranteed to get pretty girls out on the dance floor, where we could see down their tops from up on the stage.)

although all 3 will go back to doing good work on their own, it still feels like comparing wings to the beatles. maybe it's best that way - that they go out, again, on a high note, with 5 remarkable albums as their legacy, rather than becoming yet another band that plays the same old songs the same old way, until it's puppets & spinal tap time.

maybe it's better that they go the python route, after all. yo!!

climate change and cake

yvo de boer, the u.n. climate guy whose name is fun to say, announced that global warming is only going to make the global food crisis worse. (everybody say duh.)

at the same time, scientists announced that climate change will also lead to more kidney stones. (now we know why tricky dickless has been suppressing climate change reports - including reports of deaths caused by global warming and a report from the epa that changes caused by greenhouse gases are a major threat to humans. we've always suspected that he was an alien kidney stone!)

meanwhile, the big mac, medium fry, and medium coke that you had for lunch added 1,130 calories to your fat ass, and the u.n.'s fao finally figured out that burgers are the major cause of global warming.

but don't you worry - your government isn't standing idly by. to talk about the global food crisis, the leaders of the g8 had an 18-course dinner in japan. so we've got that going for us.

(see? you were getting all worried over nothing. now let your neighbor out of the chest freezer.)

amateur vs. professional

remember: the amateur works until he can get it right. the professional works until he cannot go wrong.

lilian stiles-allen (1896 - 1982)

magical maggie gyllenhaal

with 2 golden globe nominations under her belt and an impressive body of work already behind her, 31-year-old maggie gyllenhaal definitely has chops. she's also not afraid to show skin or play edge characters (if you haven't seen secretary, you've missed one of the decade's great performances). but still...

...doesn't she remind you of that girl that you dated in college that always seemed a lot older than she was? you know - the one that smoked, drank rum & coke, and always had that sardonic smile after sex.

(you know - the one that never came. oh yeah - that girl.)

the latest lie about alaskan oil

we know that the high cost of gas is bothering you. (yeah, but have you seen exxon's stock lately? those guys are practically printing money.) we're not about to tell you that we have a magic bullet, because there isn't one. that includes the lastest b.s. being slung in dc about how opening up the alaskan national wildlife refuge to big oil will do anything but make dubya and tricky dickless's puppeteers even richer.

how do we know? because the dept. of energy ran a report on this very subject earlier this year, and estimated that - at most - drilling in alaska will only drop the price of oil by 75 cents/barrel. that's out of us$130/barrel, according to the latest figures on bloomberg. with gas at us$4/gallon, this represents a whopping savings of 2 and 1/3 cents per gallon.

best of all, it will only cost you every polar bear on the planet. fuck'em! our hummer is thirsty for yukon gold.

a tale of 2 faces

in the rush to bow down to the heath ledger hype, we think it's important to point out something that everyone else seems to have missed: aaron eckhart turns in a performance as harvey dent/two face that is every bit the equal of heath ledger's joker.

we're not trying to take anything away from ledger - his joker is, indeed, a riveting and deeply disturbing character. but the joker is, for all practical purposes, static. he is the same man at the end of dark knight as at the beginning, but harvey dent is not. eckhart's portrayal of a truly good man who becomes a monster, inside and out, is a nuanced, painful journey. it is disturbingly easy to see ourselves in dent's shoes. unfortunately (and even at more than 2 and 1/2 hours), his story is cut too short. we could easily have sat through 3 hours of storytelling this good.

so, if you're one of the 2 people that haven't seen it yet, see it. the script is tight, the cast is excellent (bale isn't given much to do, but that's a truism of bat-flicks; they've always been more about the villains, and we were getting a might tired of his bat-rasp, anyway), and it is, if anything, better than the first film in the current series, with none of the cliches and smarmy sound-bytes that kept getting in the way last time around.

there is a well-played sub-story about privacy, responsibility, and the limitations of power (even well-intentioned power) that we found interesting, too. it was a bit rushed, but it's still cerebral fare for a guys-in-tights movie - especially when compared to the other superhero flicks we've seen this summer. and the ending gives us a good reason to look forward to the next nolan flick. (and - since dark knight made back its production cost of us$158 million in its opening weekend alone - we can rest assured that there will, indeed, be a sequel.)

we can only hope that watchmen is handled half as well. (in case you haven't heard, the watchmen preview runs in front of dark knight. it's pretty to look at, but looking back at the long list of those who have attempted to bring watchmen to the screen, we'll reserve our judgement until we see it beginning to end.)

att: fanboys - salma hayek is available again

if you've ever seen kevin smith's brilliant satire dogma, or the art-house flick frida, then you already know that salma hayek has solid acting chops, a sense of humor, a sexy voice (reminds us of marina sirtis, but with a little more swing), and the most bodacious set of ta-ta's this side of jennifer connelly (if you like that sort of thing).

going strong at 41, ms. hayek recently had a child, and has now decided not to marry the father. (francois-henri pinault, by name. and as we're sure you'll agree, no fella with a poofter name like that should have been allowed anywhere near a hottie of ms. hayek's caliber when there are piles of perfectly good gregs and kevins lying around for her to use.)

fanboys, you may now begin fantasizing (as if you ever stop, you cheeky little monkeys).

quit yer bitchin' #3

yes, lines to see dark knight will be long, heath ledger's performance has been hyped beyond reason, and you're tired of a summer movie season that consists entirely of superheroes, but look at the bright side: you could be this guy.

(we don't want to know where his pants went.)

teachers forced to be nurses

here's a bit of utter bullshit: because of inadequate funding, school nurses have been forced out of school districts across the country, and classroom teachers are being made to assume their duties.

wtf?!

education is the single most important task that we give our government. in our opinion, it ranks above national defense. teachers get paid little enough. it is ridiculous to make them take on a role that they are not trained for, and that has nothing to do with teaching - which is what we pay them for.

if you have kids in school, contact your local school district and finds out if they still employ school nurses. if they do, ask how many schools each nurse is responsible for. share this information with your neighbors and at pta/ptsa and school board meetings. this is a bit of crap that we shouldn't let anyone sweep under the rug.

bush tries to hide cheney's dickery

any time that dubya claims executive privilege, you can be sure of one thing: he's trying to keep one of his staffers out of jail. in this case, vp tricky dickless (aka dick cheney).

it's no secret to anyone in dc that scooter libby was not the original source of the valerie plame leak, and that dubya pardoned him to keep the real source from becoming public. it's also no secret why karl rove refuses to testify before congress about it. (in fact, he ignored the subpoena outright.)

congress should continue to bring to light, by any means at its disposal, exactly what rove and dickless's roles were in this crime, and to prosecute them for any crimes they are found to have committed. for 7 years, this administration seems to have held the opinion that its members are above the law. it's time to remind them - and the rest of the country - that we don't play the divine right of kings here in the u.s.

getting robbed at the pump

one of the things that we don't seem to be getting anywhere near angry enough about is the fact that we're getting robbed every time we fill up - and not just because the price per gallon is so high. it all has to do with a little bit of trickery called automatic temperature compensation.

gasoline expands or contracts depending upon its temperature. automatic temperature compensation promotes the fallacy that the temperature is always the same. the result: you pay for gas that you don't actually get. and with gas above $4/gallon, it adds up to a sizable sum - especially when you think about how long the oil companies have been doing it.

tips on pumping gas may help a little, but the fact is, we're being robbed. so what are you going to do about it? what can you do about it? the first step: write your members of congress and tell them you're angry. tell them you want to see temperature-corrected pricing at the pump. then maybe you can actually afford to take that road trip before summer is over.

to hellboy & back

sequels are hard. still, there was every reason to expect that hellboy 2 would be a terrific film.

based on characters we already know & like, from a screenwriter/director of considerable talent that not only gets the characters, but who helmed the flick that started the franchise, it looked like the pre-bat summer favorite. based on current box office - and despite the fact that it was made for less money than the original film, as well as because it was made for less - hellboy will turn out to be a good money maker for its new studio. there are just a couple of things we don't like about it. they all come down to one thing: a mediocre script.

this is especially disappointing given that guillermo del toro, the aforementioned writer/director, also brought us pan's labyrinth and mimic - two terrific, genre-busting films. so what happened?

the story feels rushed, the dialogue has no conviction or (original, rather than cliche) sound bytes, giving the actors little to work with. the humor feels forced, the first film better portrayed the feelings that the characters have for each other and for their situation, and - horror of horrors - there are fight scenes without rhyme or reason.

look, we know that hellboy, on one level, is about a good brawl every bit as much as hulk is, but at least give us a reason (rather than a pathetic excuse) for the big red palooka to haul out five-fingered mary. there's even a gratuitous scene where hellboy is hauling a baby around while climbing the signage on a tall building and trying to avoid becoming monster chow, when there was absolutely no reason for him to still have the kid at all.

there are some rewards: watching red and abe sapien get drunk on tecate while singing along to barry manilow is priceless, and the creatures that del toro, mignola, and barlowe have come up with are beautiful and imaginative (with the exception of the elves, which look like a re-working of jeremy irons' morlock make-up in the time machine). but there are an equal number of disappointments, such as how new bprd team member johann strauss and jeffrey tambor are completely wasted, turned into mere cardboard cutouts, when their comic book incarnations have more life and depth to them.

think about that a minute: the comic book characters have more depth than the movie characters. with a cast this terrific and a director this talented. wtf?

maybe we're just jaded. we kid you not: a solo 60-something grandmother sat in the seat in front of us and laughed at all the jokes - even the sloppy ones - and afterwards said how much she enjoyed it, despite probably not being included in the film's target audience.

it's got us worried about the hobbit, guillermo's next outing (with the blessing of lord of the rings director peter jackson, who will serve as producer), when we weren't before. does this dip in quality in the hellboy film line mean that the comics will also be allowed to decline in quality? comics of quality are almost impossible to find, these days, let alone ones that dip into so many cultures and mythologies, and with such a well-written cast (don't even get us started on mike mignola's art; we'll be here all day).

that would truly be a shame. hopefully mignola, hellboy's creator, has taken note of more than his paycheck. and maybe he can convince himself - and publisher dark horse - to allow a script based on some of the comic material. 'cause we'd definitely pay to see big red in the jet pack on the big screen.

you listenin', mike?

katie reider 1978 - 2008

katie reider was a singer, songwriter, wife, & mother of amazing talent & tremendous courage. her story is inspiring and heartbreaking, right to the end.

we don't normally plug charities, but this one is close to home, and provides you with the opportunity to help a family in need that has already given more than their fair share. after reading, please give what you can to help katie's family.

thank you.

update: here is the press release re: katie's death. the new york times also had something to say.

journey to the center of boredom

as much as we like brendan fraser - and we do - even he seems to be tired of appearing in nearly plotless fx flicks. (or maybe he simply likes the payday's, since he's starring in yet another mummy sequel.)

despite the gimmick (it's 3d), the fx read as computer graphics, and it's nearly impossible to be any more interested than the cast, let alone suspend disbelief. the characters are an excuse for the fx, never more substantial than sketches. this isn't the cast's fault (unless you fault them for reading this pathetically flimsy script and still deciding to sign on).

it might end up making a little more than it cost, but there's no reason that you should subject yourself to this land of the lost wannabe merely to give walden media's bottom line a kick.

our advice: go see hellboy, instead.

tricky dickless is loose again

vp dick cheney - or tricky dickless, as we affectionately call him - used to work for halliburton, an oil field services company that's currently getting as fat as a blood-soaked tick on our back in iraq. odds are that, once he's out of office - and if his frankenstein heart holds out a little longer - he'll get another job there. in fact, most of dubya's staff hails from oil country & the oil business. so why is anyone surprised when tricky dickless rabidly suppresses any information that suggests that climate change might be a bad thing?

including getting the centers for disease control to edit their report regarding the negative health impacts climate change will have - especially on children and the elderly. and then, of course, lie about it.

in more tricky dickless shenanigans, the epa dropped hundreds of wetlands cases after a controversial supreme court case.

makes us wish they let him off the leash more often, just for the sheer entertainment value that he brings to the table. honestly, we couldn't make stuff this good up. 'what's he gonna do next? maybe eat some babies. you never know, with tricky dickless. is he gonna declare war on iran? claim obama is gay? keep watching - maybe he'll do a trick!'

the fark food chain - part 1

we are big fans of fark, the website, but we're not so crazy about the reason that it exists. which brings us to an explanation of the corporation-traditional media food chain. (we'll discuss the government-traditional media food chain, the celebrity-traditional media food chain, and web 2.0 a bit later. having just come from a stint in 'the biz', we've got plenty to rant about.)

in the age of traditional media, if you're a pr person at a company, your job is to try to get said media interested in your company and its products/services. to do this, you send out press releases. well-written releases sound just like news and - in a time when traditional media is laying off as fast as it can print pink slips and the remaining journalists are wearing umpteen hats - the temptation to reprint press releases as if they were news is high, and increasing daily.

of course, it helps the medicine go down if you soft-sell your company or cause a bit. and if you can somehow associate your product or service with a current hot topic, no matter how remote that association is, and you're even closer to the prize. get a couple of 'experts' to support your cause - at least marginally - and you're practically guaranteed to get at least some media pickup.

and that, in a nutshell, is fark: not-news pretending to be news. and here's a fine example: watermelon has viagra-like effects. or how about the secret to a better golf game?

orangutans first great apes to become extinct

based on vocabulary & cognitive studies, an adult orangutan is about as intelligent as an average 6-year-old. which is a shame, really, as it means that they are probably aware that they are becoming extinct. they only exist on 2 tiny islands, now, and recent sharp declines mean that they will probably be the first of the great apes to disappear, followed by bonobos, gorillas, and chimps.

in other happy earth news, our coral reefs are dying fast, mosquitos blanket the flooded midwest (but at least there's no malaria yet), and 12 out of 19 penguin species are in trouble.

causes for the above: climate change, pollution, overfishing, lumber companies, bush meat poaching, human sprawl, & good, old-fashioned monkey-mindedness.

why your 12-year-old shouldn't date

when i was in my teens, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, there was a simple rule regarding when it was appropriate to date: 16, period. now i know why.

in a recent survey conducted by liz claiborne, 1 in 5 kids 13 - 14 years old said that they know someone their age in a physically abusive relationship. 50% said they know of someone their age in a verbally abusive relationship. and sex at these ages actually increases the risk of abuse.

got that moms & dads? it isn't 'cute', it isn't 'mature', it isn't 'the way things are nowadays': it's playing russian roulette with your kids' lives. here at elsewhen, we tend to swing to the left when it comes to social policy, but this is one issue where the old way is the best way.

medicine's right to rape & pillage

what drives us crazy about healthcare is how providers & politicians throw up their hands & say 'costs are skyrocketing', as if it were an act of god. costs are skyrocketing because we let medical device manufacturers, insurance companies, & big pharma rape us. period.

case in point: the white house recently said it would delay medicare payments to doctors in order to give congress time to block a scheduled 10.6% fee cut. this fee cut is built into some good legislation that's meant to protect us from exactly this kind of pillaging. when medicare fees get too high, it kicks in to cut payments to providers as an incentive for them to keep their costs reasonable.

sounds brilliant, doesn't it? almost too good for a politician to have come up with. there's just one little problem: every single time that it's about to kick in, with the president's help, congress blocks it. why even have the law in the first place? because it looks good on paper, and probably helped a few of these folks to get re-elected.

we have a better idea: tell your congress-people to quit circumventing this law and allow the centers for medicare & medicaid services to do what this law was designed to do. we're willing to bet that, after one month of less-than-obscene profits, with the prospec of further cuts in the months to come, the medical community will back down, and we can all relax a little.

quit yer bitchin' #2

remember - no matter how terrible you may think your job is, someone out there has a worse one.

in this case, jacking off killer whales.

(now you know why they always look like they're smiling. plus we have it on good authority that whale organs are prehensile.)

how to research congressional voting records

so now that we're down to obama and mccain, maybe you want to take a look at their congressional voting records. or maybe your congress-people are up for re-election and you want to know if they've actually done things - at least things in the public record - that you agree with. after the jump, you'll find all of that and more.

(don't you love the web? what the heck did we ever do before it?)

in memorium: bozo the clown

for baby boomers like us, larry harmon was not bozo the clown. our bozo the clown was a fellow in windsor, ontario, that was trained and licensed by larry harmon. kids in chicago had a different bozo - so did kids in a lot of towns. that was what larry harmon did - he trained and licensed bozos for local television stations, produced cartoons and coloring books and whatnot, and fiercely defended the character of bozo.

in a time when every licensed character is all about selling cd's, dvd's, and every other kind of chinese-manufactured crap, it may seem an odd concept that bozo was much more about entertaining kids and being kind than anything else.

larry harmon didn't originate the character but, as far as we're concerned, he was the heart and soul of bozo. we miss those days, and we will miss him.

jesse helms: bigot to the end

what can you say about a state where 55% of the folks that vote elected a confirmed opponent to civil rights to congress 5 times? helms even fought against naming a national holiday for dr. martin luther king, despite the fact that he had an illegitimate black daughter, himself.

he was a bigot to the end, and we're not about to pretend otherwise (if you're in doubt about that, watch his infamous hands commercial), or say that we're sorry that he's dead. helms symbolized the caricature of the loud-mouthed southern bigot, and nc - and congress - is better off without him.

let's move on.

u.s. in last place among g8

in what we're sure is no surprise to anyone, a new study found that the u.s. has done the least among the world's 8 largest economies to address global warming.

maybe it has something to do with the fact that dubya denied global warming existed for the first 6 years of his presidency, refused to ratify the kyoto protocols, then admitted that global warming existed but denied that it was caused by us, then admitted that it was probably caused by us but would 'harm the economy' (translation: dip exxon's stock) too much to fix.

so when we choose up sides to play morlocks and eloi, make sure that any oil company stockholders that you know end up on the buffet table instead of around it.

hancock has it

this summer will have seen 5 major super hero movies, by the time we put away our bbq grills. of those that have shown up so far, hancock is by far the best.

before the fanboys and marvel true believers flame us, iron man had a passable script, a predictable plot, and a brilliant performance by robert downey. the incredible hulk had a better script, a solid performance by ed norton, and some genuine (if fleeting) pathos. (the monster fight at the end was draggy, silly, and unrealistic, but let's not quibble.)

hancock has pathos, realism, and - if you're looking for it - more than a little symbolism. in fact, depending upon your bent, you can read it to be about the perils of public falls from grace, a parable about the might & the mess the u.s. swaggers through the world, latent racism, or any number of other talking points. whether any of that registers or not, will smith delivers a performance full of nuance, in what could have easily been a walk on portrayal of a very flawed man that still tries to do what he thinks is right - even when literally all of l.a. wishes that he wouldn't.

some critics have whined about the sudden plot shift a bit more than halfway in. we liked that part, but wish it could have been given more time to have some impact (and that they'd given more time to the bad guy, who has the shortest screen time of any supervillain in history). the whole last half hour feels rushed and unsatisfying. did they do sudden, last-minute surgery and leave out key scenes?

to be frank, the biggest problem is that somewhere around this point, hancock forgets whether it's a drama or a comedy. it could have been both - the spiderman films are a recent example of a successful marriage of the two... well, except for number 3 - but it's not. it would be interesting to read the original draft of the script, just to see where it went.

even with the holes, hancock deserves a look, if only for what it says about us, and about our expectations regarding our heroes.

how should brooke bennett's step-dad die?

in case you missed the first 5 years of elsewhen, we have a special place in our hearts for anyone that kills kids. we derive a great deal of pleasure thinking of creative ways to express our affection to these worthy folks. some past bits of whimsy: setting them on fire via a slowly turned rotisserie, eyes scooped out with melon-ballers, testicles removed via the mouth... you get the idea. anyway, we got to thinking: why should we have all the fun? so we threw up a new survey for you to decide how our latest american idol should end his days.

this fellow lives in vt and faked emails and whatnot to make it look like his 12-year-old niece, brooke bennett, met a stranger online and subsequently disappeared. instead, it turns out that he recruited her (and at least one other underage girl) to be sex slaves. his niece recently turned up dead, buried in a shallow grave near his house. the girl's stepfather is also implicated.

anyway, enjoy the survey, and please feel free to suggest anything that we may have missed. (some folks have said it's poor taste to suggest ways for people to die in fun. we want you to know that we would never do this. as far as we're concerned, any means of death that we come up with is too good for anyone that hurts a kid. we truly wish that the death penalty was mandatory in these cases, and that we really did get to decide how. what a wonderful world that would be.)

own a gun, shoot yourself

one of the facts that we bet isn't included in the nra's 'exciting, informative' content is the astounding fact that 55% of gun deaths aren't homeowners defending themselves from prowlers and other felons, or even gun-related accidents.

they're suicides.

the end is near

so what else is new, right? we've got nuclear proliferation, water wars, asteroid impact, climate change, obesity, pollution, and a hundred other possible ends on the menu. you either learn to live with it or you don't. so we thought we'd share this latest doomsday for the shear novelty of it: death by black hole.

we don't really believe that's what's gonna happen, of course, and the research planned for the new ultra-super-duper-collider may finally help us finish that time machine out in the garage. still, there's one thing you can say about the scientists making all the assurances: they're only human.

a novel approach to obesity

one of the many, many, many, many down sides to the high cost of oil is that it costs more to produce food. a few countries have tried raising food prices to cover the increase, to less than resounding praise. rather than panic the locals here, and squeeze already tight household budgets, u.s. food manufacturers have opted to keep prices flat-line while decreasing the quantity in each box, carton, and/or bag.

so if that bag of chips feels a little emptier even than usual, that's because it is. (sold by weight not volume, my ass.)