Planet Utah

How big is the market for vanilla?

In my part of town, Cox Channel 11 features mostly civic affairs programming. (Lately, and inexplicably, though, they've also been showing "Reno 9-1-1" reruns. I have to say, these are MUCH better than that dude with the crew cut interviewing a fat lady about the upcoming South Phoenix Filmstrip Festival.) The other night, I happened to catch county attorney Andrew Thomas hosting a special program on the county's efforts to reduce drunk driving.

Thomas makes Warren Christopher look like Bill Clinton.

Now, before I get on with the Thomas-doubting, let me say two nice things about him: 1) he seems like a decent, moral guy and a good husband and father (I'm not inferring all of that; I know him a little, as they say, and I have friends who know him a lot); and 2) he's obviously intelligent and hard-working.

Unfortunately, television is about style, not substance. Thomas is basically a plain, bland-looking guy -- with or without the moustache. When he makes television appearances, there's nothing physically compelling about him as there is with, say, Rebecca Rios or Dana Perino, or heck, even David Drier. Not to mention Gretchen Mol. (Now, I'm certain some of my female readers and my gay friend John will say, "Oh, come on -- he has a nice smile." Indeed he does. Unfortunately, the only times he smiles are when: a) he's posing for official photos, or b) a Mexican "migrant" accidentally touches an electrified portion of the border fence. Rarities, both. Without the smile, this is what he looks like.)

When you see him on television, too, the body language is WAY off. For one thing, he always looks as if his arms were attached about 15 seconds before air time...and he still doesn't quite know what to do with them. His head, too, sometimes gets cocked off to the side. His gestures are forced, and his face is expressionless. When you put it all together, he ends up coming off like a marionette. (You really need video to capture the full effect, but if you were to animate this picture and get rid of the smile, you'd have some sense of it.)

Unfortunately, Thomas either doesn't know all of this or doesn't care, because he's on my television every 20 or 30 seconds doing some frivolous public service announcement: "Parents, talk to your kids about the dangers of getting gum in their hair..."

But THAT, my friends, may be what saves him from his awkward self -- his ambition. He runs scorched earth campaigns against opponents. He aggressively and successfully courts media attention. He pushes hot buttons like a laboratory rat being rewarded with rocks of crack cocaine. (Ironically, he has established a policy of zero tolerance for crack-smoking rats.)

Thus far, it seems to be working pretty well for him.

So, how high can he go? I'd say the Arizona AG's office is the upper limit -- and even that may be a stretch. However, if you'd poor-mouthed the prospects of another awkward but ambitious pol, you'd have been very, very wrong.

Footnote: all of this linking is exhausting!

CPS storm troops ready? Swarm! Swarm!

Read this story about the worst mother in the world. Be sure to have a barf bag handy.

Jordin Sparks and America Ferrara are the same person

Here's one. Here's the other.

Now think about it. Have you ever seen them at a party together?

Big day

I got carded buying a bottle of wine tonight. That's a nice thing when you're 42, but you never know if it's store policy to card everyone or if you really look like you're under 30. As I was leaving, though, the cashier said, "I have to say, you look much younger than your ID says. You could be your own son!"

Wow! I don't care if she was drunk, or flirting, or bullshitting, or whatever, I'm going to tuck that compliment away and bring it out the next time a co-ed looks at me like I'm a creepy old man.

The second McLeod Era

Do you remember when John McCleod coached the Phoenix Suns? They were always good, always competitive. One year, they even went to the NBA finals. But they never won a championship.

Finally, after much hand-wringing, Suns management fired McLeod. Why? Because he couldn't get them over the hump.

Well, Suns fans, welcome back to the future.

I'm not jumping off the bandwagon because the Suns have hit a bit of a rough patch. I've never been on the bandwagon with this style of play. I've always said that it's fun to watch, it will get you to the postseason, it may even carry you deep into the playoffs, but it won't win you a championship.

So how long do we have to wait before Suns management either: a) gets rid of Mike D'Antoni, or b) persuades D'Antoni that he's got to build a team that succeeds through equal parts defense, rebounding, and scoring?

Let's hope it happens between the end of the current season and the beginning of the next. I'm tired of waiting.

American Movie Classics -- says who?

Are you familiar with the AMC channel -- American Movie Classics? If you Google the channel to get a quick description, you'll learn that AMC shows "classic films from the 1930s to the 1980s." If you check their programming schedule, you'll find such classics as:

• Lionheart (that's a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie);
• Lara Croft, Tomb Raider;
• Sniper (Tom Berenger and Billy Zane);
• Red Dawn (Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen); and
• The Wedding Planner.

Yup, a classic, each and every one. I think there were something like 40 or 50 Oscar nominations among them. (All these years later, "Red Dawn" still holds me in its thrall. I will be forever haunted by the imprisoned Harry Dean Stanton's plaintive cries for vengeance, and moved by the tender depiction of brotherly love between Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, two characters who know that while they may lose everything, at least they will lose it together.)

Believe me, I didn't have to scrape the bottom of the AMC barrel to find these films. They're standard fare on this channel.

I would really enjoy a classic movie channel, but this ain't it. Anybody know of a better option?

Conservatives and movies

There's been some grumbling among Reagan officials about the new Tom Hanks movie, "Charlie Wilson's War." It's standard stuff -- "this is a movie made by Hollywood liberals, reflecting their political agenda rather than the truth."

Liberals will deny this, of course. The smarter ones, though, will respond as follows: "If you don't like our movies, make your own." Then conservatives will say, "We can't get our movies made in Hollywood. The studios are dominated by liberals." Then liberals will say, "Liberals, conservatives, whatever -- we're all interested in the same thing: money. You show a studio that a movie will make money, and they'll make the movie. Money is the only language that Hollywood really understands." Then conservatives will say, "Really? It doesn't look that way. Take the Iraq war, for example, and the war on terror. A handful of movies have come out in the past six months that were ambivalent toward the war or altogether anti-war, and each one bombed. Why haven't we seen any movies that are more supportive of the war?"

And so on.

I think that liberals get the better of this argument, and they get it in the first quote in the previous paragraph: "If you don't like our movies, make your own." All by himself, Mel Gibson has enough money to establish a studio dedicated to making nothing but conservative movies. So, maybe Mel doesn't want to step up to the plate. But if you passed around a hat to American conservatives interested in such an undertaking, you could raise billions and billions of dollars in start-up capital. Then, either the studio would make money or it wouldn't. If it lost money, conservatives could decide that the mission of the studio was important enough to keep it open as a money-losing venture. (That's what happens at National Review, by the way. It doesn't turn a profit; it's kept open by contributions--not subscription fees and advertising revenues, but actual contributions--from guys like me.) If it made money, well, all the better.

Either way, conservatives would have an outlet for the films they would like to see made. There's nothing stopping them other than the will to do it.

Name the artist

Who recently said the following?

"I'm working on my record right now, actually. I've been in the studio and it's going really well. I'm really excited. It's going to be more urban pop.... It's good to be back in the studio."

Lindsay Lohan, of all people. I'll be you she's the ONLY one who's really excited.

The Mormon God -- a civil rights laggard

If you weren't aware of it before, you are now: blacks were denied full participation in the Mormon church and the "Mormon afterlife" until 1978. The church changed its policy following a revelation from God in that year.

That's the LDS story, anyway.

What seems much, much more likely is that the church was coming under increasing political and economic pressure to change its policy, and so finally relented. (The same thing happened when the Mormons gave up polygamy.)

If you believe the Mormons' story, you have to believe that the God of the one true church didn't get around to righting this wrong until 1978. Ridiculous... And yet, as with the rest of Mormonism, they tell us this story with a straight face.

The difference between Bonds and Clemens

Now that Roger Clemens has been implicated in the MLB steroid scandal, many baseball fans are saying, "If you're not as hard on Clemens as you've been on Bonds, that proves you're racist."

Does it? Not necessarily.

Bonds is a tool, a jerk, a racist (in the sense that he associates white America with undesirable, racially motivated behavior).

Clemens is a tough guy, a good 'ol boy, a lovable rogue.

We like Clemens. We don't like Bonds. That's one reason we're harder on Bonds. It's not all about race.

You want proof? Well, how hard have we been on Marion Jones? She's black, she was on the juice, she lied about it, and she got caught. So, have we come down on her the same way we have on Bonds? Nope. Why not? Part of it, undoubtedly, is that she's not as high profile a figure as Bonds is. But part of it, too, is that she's not an arrogant jerk in the way that Bonds is. She was humble in her success, and she's now (apparently) contrite in her humiliation.

And how hard were we on Shawn Kemp for fathering 40 or 50 kids and not taking responsibility for them? Not very. Why? Because by the time we found that out, he was already in the second tier of NBA stars, about 10 LBS away from the third tier. He didn't merit the attention of a Bonds. But if Dog the Bounty Hunter says the word "nigger"--a much smaller offense, if you ask me, than fathering and abandoning a bunch of kids--we're ALL over that. Why? Because Dog is on our TVs every day.

All I'm saying is that it's a multivariate world, and race is just one variable. So let's not get carried away...