The Entertainment Scene

Once the Democratic race is finally over (but don't count out Hillary yet) what are the late night comedians going to do for topical jokes? Can you expect there to be another Eliot Spitzer or Larry Craig to provide daily material? Probably yes, which is what makes our country great! Out of desperation, I've noticed that even poor George W. is being used to fill the insatiable need for someone to make fun of. Is there no end to the same old, same old jokes about Bush 43? Everyone has the message already. Let's move on to some new targets. Any candidates?

Some readers of the Normal Blog (there aren't very many--yet) feel that the comments about John Adams were unfair to him. But blame HBO and Paul Giamatti for portraying him as totally lacking in personality and charm, unlike his wife Abigail. Contrast him with his opposite number (sort of) on Sunday night on Showtime--- Henry VIII in The Tudors. Now there was a stud, not a dud. Of course, he did have a few of his wives executed, but hey, those were different times. Even the sex on The Tudors is graphic, not discreet as in the Adams household (maybe because John and Abigail apparently never frolicked in the woods with only their horses nearby).

Israel was criticized in some movie circles for not entering The Band's Visit as their official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2007 Oscars. But, after seeing it, I can understand why. Although it's subtitled in entirety, it's primarily spoken in English with some Hebrew and Arabic. By the way, it's an excellent film and you'll love the luminous Israeli actress, Ronit Elkabatz. Speaking of multilanguage movies, there's also the current The Year My Parents Went on Vacation, mostly in Portuguese but with some Yiddish. A very unusual combination.

Random Thoughts

Wouldn’t the perfect running mate for Barack Obama be Silda Spitzer? Like an even more famous current candidate, she’s an Ivy League educated lawyer who has years of experience closely watching a superstar politician husband. She would attract the same humiliated woman sympathy that many white women feel for Hillary and to boot she’s a Baptist converted to Judaism, which would attract even more constituencies. But first, she’d have to dump Eliot. We can’t have him only a heartbeat away from being first lady.

I wonder why more political campaigns don’t travel with a resident veterinarian. There seems to be an epidemic of “hoof in mouth” disease. Every other day, it seems, either the candidate (McCain) or their advisors (for Obama and Clinton) are saying something so stupid that the spin doctors have to work overtime. Makes you sort of dizzy, doesn’t it?

Interesting that Bear Stearns offices were in the then relatively new World Trade Center when the 1987 stock market collapse caused them to move out, thus fortuitously removing them from the consequences of 9/11. The current implosion at least didn’t cost any lives. Unlike 1929, most office building windows don’t open. Otherwise, some disenchanted investors and employees might be tempted to do some pushing of the current version of Masters of the Universe. That term was coined by Tom Wolfe in his classic Bonfire of the Vanities written in, believe it or not, 1987. We never do learn from history, do we?