The Chris Moeller Archives

Slumdog

"Slumdog Millionaire" may indeed be the best picture of the year, as much for its energy and its polished editing as for its suspenseful and heartwarming story. (My insides have been very cold of late.) I found the plot amusing-- 19-year-old product of the Mumbai slums appears on Indian television version of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" and how he learned the answer to each trivia question is revealed through a series of flashbacks into his turbulent upbringing. How fortuitous, I thought to myself, that not only would he have collected all of the answers, but that he would have learned them chronologically to the order in which the questions were asked. He appeared on the show too early in his life-- if he were 100 years old, he would have raked in about $10 million by the time the end credits rolled.

Rob S, my theater sidekick, made an apt comparison. Jamal Malik's tailor-made questions on "Millionaire", he said, were reminiscent of mail carrier Cliff Clavin's Jeopardy "dream board" during a memorable 1990 episode of "Cheers." Cliff's Jeopardy categories- "civil servants," "stamps from around the world," "mothers and sons," "beer," "bar trivia," and "celibacy."

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You guys are not going to believe this, but I've been living the same day over and over again. I wake up every day right here, and it's always February 2nd. And there's nothing I can do about it.

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It will be a truly sorry day if former Senator Tom Daschle is confirmed by that body to be the new Secretary of Health and Human Services. It's bad enough that the man who would be in charge of taking on the most important health care mandate in the history of this country has collected more than $200,000 in fees over the last two years from speaking engagements in front of our largest health care conglomerates, but then he failed to pay more than $140,000 in taxes and interest on this and other income from his "consulting" work in Washington. This is despicable-- a conflict of interest compounded by theft and deceit.

Employ the Daschle strategy in your tax filing this year-- cheat like hell; if caught, apologize profusely.

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Rod Blagojevich will appear on the Letterman show Tuesday night. A national poll revealed that 65 percent of Americans are ready for the disgraced former governor of Illinois to just go away. Twenty-five percent say they think his Letterman appearance will be wildly entertaining. The other 10 percent say they hope he gets slapped by Jerry Lawler.

posted by CM @ 6:52 PM