World Cup Finals Party Ideas

With the World Cup ready to enter its quarterfinals stage, I'm gearing up for having a celebration for the finals match coming up in a few weeks. The plan is that food and drink and decoration will correspond the two countries in the finals--for example, if Spain and Brazil face off, we'd be drinking sangria and doing Brazilian bbq. If Germany is in it, a nice lager and alpine hats. If Argentina makes it, we will NOT be playing the Evita soundtrack. In fact, I shall preserve my guy cred by pretending I never even heard of Evita or this thing you call "musical theater."

Of course, this plan has its drawbacks--what do we do if Ghana makes it? I don't know what the Ghanese eat! I once had a roommate who was from Ghana but she always cooked Italian food if that tells you anything. And Netherlands--okay, I can drink a Heineken like the best of them, but what food do they eat besides pot brownies? Though on the other side, they did have some Dutch rock songs that made it big in the early '70s ("Venus" by the Shocking Blue and "How do You Do" by Mouth and McNeal. But imagine hearing those two songs on a continuous loop? You'd end up strangling me with my Argentine sombrero!).

If only the Irish and Italians could have been in the final--then I could have sat back with a pizza and a Harps like the best of them.

Gods, Generals, and Blood

Last night's film was the Civil War epic, "Gods and Generals", featuring Robert Duvall as Robert E. Lee. The film was a punishing 3.5 hours long, but featured excellent set piece battle scenes. (I'll admit I don't really understand people who choose to re-enact Civil War battles on weekends, but apparently hundreds of them were used for this film and really did a great deal to add to the realism of the fighting). The action covered three key battles--First Manassas (where "Stonewall" Jackson earned his nickname), Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, and drew heavily on the religious and fatalist worldview of the Confederate generals.

The film also drove home this point--we Northerners got screwed when it came to generals! Ambrose Burnside is accurately portrayed as an unimaginative moron, and Joseph Hooker comes across as a worthless tool. The historical record is no better--McClellan, McDowell, Fremont--each Northern general sucked! Meanwhile, the South gets brilliant soldiers like Lee, Jackson, and this guy who I wouldn't want to run into in a dark alley. The two best--or at least most celebrated--Union generals were a war criminal (William T. Sherman) and a nut who fed his men into a meat grinder (Grant--you could say Grant was ahead of his time, as his tactics were about as brilliant as those of the soulless WWI generals on the Western Front). This is exactly why an outnumbered and ill-equipped scrappy band of NASCAR ancestors was able to run circles around the U.S. Army for the better part of five years.

Next time it's only fair if the teams get to pick them.

Engagement

The past weekend was a busy one, with a lot of moving parts that had to come together just right. My plan was to take my girlfriend Shannon to brunch to celebrate a year of dating, and propose marriage right after. She was not aware of these plans, though she had a good idea something like that was going to happen this summer.

After a delicious brunch, I made some lame excuse about wanting to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue in the direction of the Capitol--something about wanting to see what the World Cup games schedule would be as announced at one of the local bars. Once the backdrop of the Capitol was in view, I did it, and the look of joy and surprise on her face was terrific. That wouldn't be the only surprise for her that day though.

My parents were in town, ostensibly to visit, and after the engagement was official Shannon knew that they were here to join us for dinner and celebrate. First though, we had snacks and white sangria on the balcony with them, where we visited and chatted about all the big plans coming up. We then dressed for a nice dinner on Capitol Hill, after which we would step into one of the bars to have a celebratory drink.

In the bar's downstairs area, we'd managed to round up a couple dozen of our close friends--some of whom came down from NYC for it--and again, she was completely floored. A night of visiting and celebrating would of course be hard felt the next day, but it was a joyous occasion and completely right--Shannon and I both value our friends greatly and it was important to have them there for it. And now, it just seems to be the beginning of the festivities, and I couldn't be happier.

Questions About Terminators

Here's my problem with the "Terminator" movies. Time travel is a terrific concept for science fiction, whether it falls into the "you can't change the past, only confirm it" camp or the "you can change the past and it'll have effects you can never anticipate" camp. The Terminator movies went with the latter camp--in the first film, the hero Kyle Reese went back in time to protect the mother of his boss (John Connor) from California's future governor (Gray Davis wasn't available, so they went with Arnold Schwartzenegger). As it turns out, Kyle impregnates Sarah Connor, making him his boss's dad and thus totally changing their workplace dynamic. But it raises a lot more questions, besides "what sort of weirdo pimps out his underling to go back in time to pork his own mother???"

The first question is, once the evil robots realized that their scheme didn't work--the Terminator did not kill Sarah Connor--then why, when they had an improved version of the Terminator for the sequel, did they not simply send it farther back in time to kill Sarah Connor when she was a child in the '60s? And again when she was snorting coke in a disco in the '70s? Or even ten minutes earlier than they tried in the '80s? The point is, with time travel you can keep it up infinitely. For that matter, when the humans sent their own Terminator to protect Sarah and a young John Connor from the new and improved Terminator in the sequel--in fact, they sent one that conveniently looked like Schwartzenegger as well! You'd think they could have made one that looked like Chuck Norris if salary negotiations broke down--why could they not send their protecting Terminator back to the time of the first film? We could have witnessed an infinite number of Terminators battling it out for eternity!

For that matter, why didn't the bad guys just send a Terminator back in time to kill a young Kyle Reese? Or the parents of Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese? Or the guy who invented poofy pants?

Judge Judy for Supreme Court

One activity I always enjoyed with my father whenever I was home on vacation on a weekday was watching episodes of "Judge Judy". You could always count on her exploding with rage at some poor sap who is (a) an idiot (b) a sneaky but not sneaky enough liar and (c) someone who had never seen the show before and didn't know what they were in for. I have now been watching a lot of the show's cases on Youtube and it's a guilty pleasure.

One thing my dad and I agreed on despite our political differences was that Judge Judy should be on the U.S. Supreme Court if not for the fact that she wouldn't want to take the pay cut. (Note--Judy's bailiff makes more each year than our Supreme Court justices. And he should, since he has done far less to make a mockery of the legal profession than they have). Consider the possibilities of Justice Sheindlin:

1) Senators at her confirmation hearing being told that on their best day, they're not as smart as her on her worst day.

2) Top litigators from firms like Cravath or Skadden being told not to pee on her leg and tell her it's raining.

3) Opinions being written in ALL CAPS.

The more you think about it the more you realize it's not a bad idea. Judge Judy doesn't have any obvious political biases (at least none that show up in her "court" cases); she has plenty of experience as an actual court judge prior to having her TV show; she is basically free from scandal. Hell, FDR put a Klansman on the court (Hugo Black), and Eisenhower made a Chief Justice out of the guy who as California Governor happily rounded up Americans of Japanese ancestry to put into camps without trial during WWII (Earl Warren--which explains why he tried to repent as a bleeding heart afterwards. But screw that guy, he's still a bastard for that).

Let's hope the President reads this when the next vacancy comes up!

Our Entertainment Industry Should Be Scrapped and Replaced With Whatever They Use in Uganda

Television in the 1980s generally sucked, with the exception of a handful of decent sitcoms (e.g., Cheers). This was partly because the '80s were suffering a polyester-based-disco-bland hangover from the previous decade, and we were still trying to get our heads together, man! Also, the people running the major networks had the brains of a pot of dirt. On the list of people who destroyed culture, with the inventor of poofy pants ranking a "1" and the practitioners of the "Electric Slide" ranking a "10", the big network execs of the '80s rank about a 43.

They brought us dreck like "Knight Rider" (mulletted Hoff bringing justice to people across the country with his talking Trans Am). The "A-Team" (a group of 'Nam vets including a man looking like Mr. T who was able somehow to elude the authorities, while pitying many fools). "Manimal" (a show that brought shame to both man and animal). And of course the wave of nostalgia has already brought a TV reboot of "Knight Rider" and an "A-Team" movie (no word yet on developments for "Manimal").

News flash--some things are better left to the dead! We don't need a "Mr. Belvedere" movie, or a 2010 version of "Dallas". Are we that far out of fresh ideas? (Scanning the TV listings--yes, yes we are.)

But, as an enterprising entrepreneur, I say think ahead. Two decades from now the nostalgia for the 2010s will kick in, and I plan to cash in on the wave of film versions of "Dancing With the Stars" and "Jersey Shore".

Cleopatra Casting

File this under "find something more important to complain about". (Yes, I note the irony of me complaining about something as petty as a complaint that I consider petty). The gist of the opinion piece is that there's something wrong with casting Angelina Jolie to play the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra because Jolie is white. Let's begin with the obvious.

CLEOPATRA WAS GREEK. And I don't mean modern Greek, with the financial collapsing and hatred of Turks who never did anything to them except perfect the kabob. I mean ancient Greek, with the plays and the gods and battles that were inaccurately described but man you weren't there so you wouldn't understand. She was descended from the Greek generals who served under Alexander (literally, ha ha get it, Alexander was totally Brokeback Macedonia if you get my drift). There was likely some interbreeding in her genetic tree, but as the author of the article concedes, there's really no more evidence that she was black than white Mediterranean.

That said, are there better reasons to not cast Angelina Jolie? I'll start with the most obvious--she has not appeared in a film that did not bomb in quite some time (you'd have to go back to Tomb Raider, a hundred years ago). In fact, her career has hit the "Oscar Curse" (also known as Halle Berry Syndrome) which has bedevilled so many actresses in the past--winning and Oscar and seeing your career disappear. The last major film about Cleopatra was the 1963 Elizabeth Taylor epic, "Cleopatra", that wrecked its studio financially and in adjusted dollars was the biggest bomb of all time. Shouldn't the studio be a bit wary of this perfect storm of box office poison?