The states of television
Just as an exercise, I tried to come up with the greatest TV show that takes place in each state. I may have forgotten some, you may quibble on other selections, and I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel in some instances. Without Wikipedia, I would have been screwed.
You've got to love a list that has "A Different World," but not "The Cosby Show."
How did I do?
Alabama- Any Day Now
Alaska- Northern Exposure
Arizona- Alice
Arkansas- Evening Shade
California- Moonlighting/Curb Your Enthusiasm/Arrested Development
Colorado- Community
Connecticut- Gilmore Girls
Delaware- The Pretender
District of Columbia- Get Smart
Florida- The Golden Girls
Georgia- Designing Women
Hawaii- Hawaii Five-O (the first one)
Idaho- Napoleon Dynamite
Illinois- The Bob Newhart Show (Chicago), Roseanne (downstate)
Indiana- Parks & Recreation
Iowa- American Pickers
Kansas- The Phil Silvers Show
Kentucky- Justified
Louisiana- Treme
Maine- Murder, She Wrote
Maryland- The Wire
Massachusetts- Cheers
Michigan- The PJs
Minnesota- The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Mississippi- In the Heat of the Night
Missouri- The John Larroquette Show
Montana- Buckskin
Nebraska- The Young Riders
Nevada- Bonanza
New Hampshire- The Brotherhood of Poland, New Hampshire
New Jersey- The Sopranos
New Mexico- Breaking Bad
New York- Seinfeld (uptown), 30 Rock (midtown), Taxi (downtown), The Honeymooners (Brooklyn), Buffalo Bill (upstate)
North Carolina- The Andy Griffith Show
North Dakota- My Secret Identity (Canadian)
Ohio- WKRP in Cincinnati
Oklahoma- Hillbilly Handfishin'
Oregon- Eureka
Pennsylvania- It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Puerto Rico- The Flying Nun
Rhode Island- Family Guy
South Carolina- American Gothic
South Dakota- Deadwood
Tennessee- Davy Crockett
Texas- King of the Hill
Utah- Big Love
Vermont- Newhart
Virginia- A Different World
Washington- Frasier
West Virginia- Hawkins
Wisconsin- That '70s Show
Wyoming- The Virginian
Last Words
I have an entire shelf at home filled with books written by comedians. Truth be known, most of them are not that good. I like the performer so I bought his/her book, and I like people to see them on my shelf. Collectively, I consider them to be America's great truth-tellers. But George Carlin's memoir "Last Words," published posthumously in 2009, is actually a great book. It's intensely clever, bracingly funny, and a damn interesting narrative. Though I have long considered Carlin almost without peer in his profession, I never realized how little I knew about his background. He's a talent so literate and in love with words, yet so marvelously vulgar. It all makes sense now that I know he's the child of some economic privilege, from Manhattan's upper west side, that was raised by a well-to-do, but drunken, violent father-- a successful newspaper ad-sales rep when New York City newspapers were king of all media (before Stern), and a status-seeking mother who saw her husband as being of the low-class, so-called shanty Irish, and herself of the "lace curtain" Irish.
And oh, the Catholicism. When I envision a young class clown getting rapped with a ruler across the knuckles by a sadistic nun, I envision young George Carlin. His teen years, spent in and out of parish schools in Morningside Heights and Harlem on upper Manhattan isle, would help shape and define his world outlook, his comedy, and his art even up until his death. Though he never comes out and says it directly, I imagine his entire career, especially the last three decades on stage, being fueled by an emotional need to piss off an entire order of nuns that might be listening. Challenging religion was at the core of who he was on stage, and Entertainment Weekly recognized the connection, once describing the man as one "for whom the sacred was profane and the profane, sacred.
"Last Words" is a beauty, as terrific as its opening line promises: "Sliding headfirst down a vagina with no clothes on and landing in the freshly shaven crotch of a screaming woman did not seem to be part of God's plan for me." He goes on to describe his very conception this way: "By the time my father's eager, whiskey-soaked sperm forced its way into my mother's egg-of-the-month club, she was forty and he was forty-eight-- certainly old enough to be carrying rubbers."
And it goes on from there. You get the idea. Check it out.
Big ole' birds
I've looked at
this famous image a million times-- I've attempted to draw it on more than one occasion-- but something is factually incorrect about it. Not sure what I'm talking about? Cubs fans, any astounding remarks you want to make first?
Ok, now the reveal: the image is out of proportion with reality, and I have a website called www.flipflopflyball.com to thank for bringing it to my attention. The birds are entirely too large for the baseball bat they're perched upon. Now graphic artist Craig Robinson has given us a look at what the St. Louis Cardinals' logo
would look like if it were proportionately correct.
That's just one of the terrific, sometimes astounding, "infographics" at
the Flipflop website. (There are more than 100 different ones.) Stay at home from work tomorrow and equate yourself with some of these brilliant graphs, a hearty mix of vibrant design and sometimes extensive statistical research. My personal favorites are
"Either side of the buttons", illustrating how the letters of each team name are divided on the front of Major League Baseball uniforms,
the breakdown of the 2010 bobblehead promotional giveaways, the
etymological Venn diagram of team names, and
the ballpark orientation graph showing which direction the batter faces in each MLB ballpark.
I dig
this too. It's under the Miscellany category.
Who says baseball fans have too much time on their hands?
A vested interest
Republicans have got to rally together and chase Rick Santorum out of the presidential race. He's single-handedly ruining the sweater vest look.
I picked up a pre-owned v-neck, argyle sweater vest for a '20s theme party a year and a half ago-- and I look terrific in it. It works on me in a sort of a retro-ironic way, befitting my unique-- some say daring-- personality. (It also helps that I have great hair and cheekbones.) My sweater vest is functional too, less restrictive than a full, itchy pullover sweater, which I cannot abide, and it can be paired with a white dress shirt that makes my skin tone look darker, and that I don't have to iron if it's worn underneath a sweater vest.
Rick Santorum might just be America's un-coolest man. His level of uncool is so off-the-charts high that it's drowning the irony. He's the subject or target of most good recently-written jokes and google-bomb efforts. (A growing percentage of the jibes are even sweater vest-related.) He's the Anita Bryant of his generation. In matters of sex, one of the coolest pastimes that a person can engage in, he's compared homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia, and he's even opposed to legal contraception because it provides "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be." He's such a religious lunatic that he even advocates criminal statutes against adultery.
He
doesn't even look good wearing the vest. He's aiming for some bullshit, '50s TV dad, "father always knows best," patriarchal image that's designed to engender the support of that far-right 10% of frightened, uneducated voters that pine for the ordered, sexist, anti-sexual pleasure, "Christian morality" version of mid-century America that never even existed. If you've caught a glimpse of Candidate Santorum on television recently, or were an Iowan stuck behind him at any point at a restaurant cash register in 2011, you know that he's much more pear-shaped now than he was when Dan Savage made him famous. My budding fashion identity for this decade is being stifled by an angrier, more hate-filled Ned Flanders, an ass-backward clod with birthing hips!
Republicans, I'm giving you until Super Tuesday to bury this guy. I want all news cameras moved away from Rick Santorum-- and as quickly as possible. If I see that he garners even 10% of the vote today in South Carolina, I'm going to be pissed. If I see that he has
added a necktie to his ensemble, I'm driving down there.
When Republicans do good
Iowa Governer Terry Branstad has made my happy list for once. He's teaming with the ACLU of Iowa to oppose the use of speed cameras on Iowa roadways. This summer, the city of Des Moines installed cameras on the McVicar Freeway, the major thoroughfare through town.
The ACLU delivered a petition to the statehouse Wednesday containing the signatures of 10,000 Iowans opposed to the red-light or speed cameras. Twenty-four House Republicans introduced legislation also in opposition.
Branstad's comments indicate that he sees the original and obvious motivation behind the use of these cameras-- and it's not public safety. It's raising money for municipalities. The governor himself was clocked for speeding by a camera in Arizona this summer, and says he was fined $200 for driving 10 miles over the speed limit. He experienced the feeling of powerlessness that comes with not being able to face one's accuser.
I oppose the use of speed cameras for reasons of distrust, and what I consider to be an unhealthy, unproductive, and unconstitutional overreach by the police state. I oppose speed limits in general for reasons of capriciousness, and because I consider it to be a regressive tax.
Des Moines' enforcement policies betray the typical hypocrisy at work: The posted speed limit through town on the McVicar (I-235) is 60 mph, but drivers won't face a fine (by official declaration!) unless they're clocked by the camera at 70 mph or more.
No, see, the speed limit is 60. You should get fined for exceeding 60, not 70. Oh, but wait, everybody and his monkey drives over 60. The posted maximum speed is considered now, by the reality of the American road, to be the speed
minimum. And if nobody obeys the law, and the law is not enforced, why does the law exist? The people have spoken with their right foot.
What we have today instead, with our traffic speed laws, is a system of graft. We have all heard about-- and even experienced ourselves-- the small town and neighborhood "speed traps." Eighty percent of drivers or more roll through the area exceeding the speed limit because they drive cars that have been manufactured to, with ease, reach speeds that are sometimes almost double the highest legal speed. Only a fraction of drivers are pulled over-- chosen by whatever physical characteristics a law officer's personal prejudices may dictate-- and those charged persons face fines usually in the triple digits, and the amount is never based on the driver's personal income. That's why it has to be considered a regressive tax when people with less money face a more impactful penalty.
Des Moines' Robot Police along I-235, and at shifting intersections throughout the city, have collected more than $400,000 in fines over just the first two months of camera enforcement, and that's the net amount for the city coffers after the subtraction of almost a third of the collected fines to the contracted camera company. Both entities are getting fat through our pocketbooks. Speed "offenders" with lots of cash stored away at home continue speeding with little disincentive. Now, who uses that freeway the most? People who work.
Enough with the sin taxes. You can see that I'm very much a libertarian on this, as I am on all social issues that I can think of right now. You pass more laws, you get more criminals, then you need more police.
Is your town broke? Need an influx of ready cash? Then start taxing rich people again! More! Lots more! Rich people have money! And recently, they've been allowed to keep more of it than at any time in our nation's history!
---
Here's another Republican suddenly occupying the happy list-- Haley Barbour. The outgoing governor of Mississippi broke with his party's long-avowed "law and order" political mandate and pardoned almost
200 prisoners on his way out of office, in action that not only releases them to freedom, but restores their voting rights. Quick, what do you call 200 Americans being pardoned and let out of prison? I call it a good start.
Our country, 'tis of thee, comprises 5% of the world's overall population, but nearly one of every four prisoners throughout the world is imprisoned here. Prisons in the United States are a for-profit industry-- big business, in fact. Prisons are one of the few things we actually still manufacture. A wildly-disproportionate number of the imprisoned are young African-American men, and we get to work quickly putting them to labor when they're behind bars. Holy shit, we've found a nuanced way to keep slavery alive. Even when they're released, they've been disenfranchised of their voting rights for the rest of their lives if they've been convicted of a felony.
Barbour went further still, by releasing not only non-violent offenders, but even some convicted murderers. For decades, even before Barbour, there have been pardoned murderers on the staff at the Mississippi governor's mansion. Says Barbour, who kept the tradition alive, "In my time, all but one of them have been murderers, because the experts say that those are the people who are the least likely to commit another crime, and that they are the ones who will serve best. I’ve found that to be the case." I love it!
A towering American political figure named Eugene Debs was cheered by his fellow inmates when he arrived at the federal penitentiary in Atlanta in 1918, having been found guilty of violating the Espionage Act because of his opposition to U.S. entry into World War I. Debs famously said at his sentencing, "Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
Cheers to Haley Barbour, a man I rarely agree with, for demonstrating humanitarian action that can be a model for other chief executives, state and federal. Another Republican governor, George Ryan of Illinois, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize after he abolished the death penalty in his state in 2005. I believe Barbour's actions make him worthy of the same.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth
What a mess the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling has created. Newt Gingrich accepts $5 million for his campaign from one man alone—a Las Vegas casino magnate named Sheldon Adelson. With this money, a so-called Super-PAC supporting Gingrich produces a 27-minute documentary attacking his opponent, Mitt Romney, over the issue of Bain Capital, an asset-management firm co-founded by Romney. The nature of the documentary’s criticism is that Bain Capital has been responsible for thousands of job lay-offs, and exposes false claims by Romney to being a “job creator.” Now Gingrich himself is distancing himself from the ad/documentary/infomercial reportedly because Sheldon Adelson believes its tenor is too harsh towards a brand of capitalism that he strongly supports.
Poor Newt Gingrich. It must suck to be owned by someone.
---
When I worked in a newsroom, it was understood that there were distinct limits in how far you could go in calling politicians on their shit. The expectation was that you called it down the line-- Democrat vs. Republican, equal time for each, quote one side, quote the other. That's how the job worked, and I never challenged the status quo. Digging deeper-- looking past the words, or questioning the words themselves-- suggested to others that the reporter had a personal agenda. This is still exactly the journalistic model I see when I watch or read the news from traditional sources, and it's what I'm referring to when I write on the blog about an "establishment" media that refuses to challenge the powerful class because it considers itself part of it or aspires to it. These organizations value their proximity and access to the inner circles of power more than they do the pursuit of truth.
In full sobriety and seriousness, the New York Times' public editor Arthur Brisbane
asked the question last week of whether or not his paper "should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about." Wow, I say. Should reporters really concern themselves with facts or just follow through with reporting a politician's claims uncritically, and leave the fact-checking to the opinion page? Did he really just ask that? This is relevatory. Embarrassingly, Brisbane also uses the phrase "truth vigilante" to demean the paper's critics in this respect.
Maybe it's not so surprising now that Judith Miller and the Times could be duped into parroting the Bush Administration's claims about WMD's in Iraq and cheerleading the nation into war. A decade later, the New York Times' ombudsman wonders in effect: Are the Times' reporters to act as journalists or stenographers? And then they wonder why there's a news-gathering gap in this country with enough room to be filled by WikiLeaks and several thousand bloggers, nearly all of which Times officials would consider to be ideologues.
Maybe we wouldn't have as many lies as we have in government today if the politicians weren't so convinced they could utter them with impunity.
---
One of the public relations strategies that institutions use to move past their crimes is stalling. They understand that the passage of time reduces inflamed emotions to a low simmer. At Penn State University, a new president is
employing the tactic of trying to separate the crimes of Jerry Sandusky from the employer that gave the sexual predator his professional reputation, access to his victims, and the benign neglect necessary to pursue his sexual assaults with license.
The recent actions of those affiliated with Penn State, ranging from the former school president all the way down to the rallying crowds of apologists among the student body, have demonstrated the fact that the school no longer deserves to have a football team, but profit implications have made it such that the NCAA no longer wields the power of the death penalty for a major football program, and the continuing passage of time from the initial public reporting of the systematic molestation of children, make it probable that we will be back to business as usual at Penn State after only a few "down-recruiting" seasons.
I'll let Deadspin's Dom Cosentino remind us why, contrary to President Rodney Erickson's P.R. efforts, "the Sandusky scandal" truly is "the Penn State scandal," and why it was more than just the actions of "one individual" destroying a school's reputation...
Two longtime Penn State administrators have been charged with perjury in connection with Sandusky's alleged crimes, and Penn State is paying for their defense. Penn State University police had a 100-page report about an allegation against Sandusky in 1998—when he was still on the Penn State football coaching staff—but no one at Penn State did anything about it, nor did anyone at Penn State even seem to know it existed for more than a decade. The former head football coach of Penn State's own testimony indicates he couldn't be bothered to disturb anyone's weekend after one of his subordinates told him he saw a child allegedly being raped in a Penn State football building shower. One month after that, Penn State sold land to Sandusky's charity. And as all that was going on, Penn State's former head football coach, a Penn State trustee, and the chairman of Sandusky's charity were pursuing a $125 million real-estate venture that was the idea of Penn State's former president. Penn State allowed Sandusky to host overnight football camps at Penn State branch campuses as late as 2009. The new Penn State president has said he and "nearly all individuals at the university" were blindsided when the grand jury issued its findings against Sandusky and those two Penn State officials, at least before he wasn't, but don't bother asking him anything else about that. Sandusky himself even watched a Penn State football game from the former Penn State president's box months after the former Penn State president, the former Penn State head football coach, the now-on-leave Penn State athletic director, a Penn State assistant football coach, and another top Penn State administrator testified before the grand jury. And that football game was played just one week before the charges against Sandusky were handed down.That's the most thorough description I've come across for a college football enterprise that should no longer exist.
The Super Groups do battle
Just when you were about to forget about
the Great Diva Showdown of 2009, the CM Blog, along with Don Cornelius, bring you just a few of the greatest soul groups of all-time!
Will it be?
The mighty
O'Jays.
Completely untouchable,
the Spinners.
The tempting
Temptations.
The stylin'
Stylistics.
Masters of the beat,
Kool & the Gang.
We don't forget them,
the Emotions.
Exploding on stage,
the Jackson 5.
Look out. For
the Isley Brothers.
You cannot stop
the Pointer Sisters.
Take some time for
Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes.
And the fabulous
Four Tops.
