Author Archive

HOWARD MEGDAL: This one leaves me unimpressed. Pretty scattershot, and Gibbs wouldn’t appear on that panel, plus that isn’t remotely like Robert Gibbs. This one is overdone. Look, they show that Fox News is unbalanced. I already knew that. Even the Glenn Beck, by virtue of being material-free, wastes a good effort from Jason Sudeikis.

STEVE MURPHY: Not their worst… but not funny, either. Although I did enjoy looking at Abby Elliot.

ZOË RICE: The best thing about this open was Attractive Blonde Lady, which made me chuckle. Unfortunately the overall affect was slow, with a couple decent moments but not enough.

JASON CLINKSCALES: I’m not big on posting scores, but since this is the proverbial gun-to-head scenario, I’ll say Indy 31 – NO 24.

HOWARD MEGDAL: Colts 38, Saints 10

CHRIS PUMMER: Saints 126, Colts -7

CHRIS PUMMER: If Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. has prized nothing else this offseason, it has been cost certainty over the next two to four years.

HOWARD MEGDAL: It isn’t that I think the Carlos Ruiz signing will ruin the Phillies. I just think it is a move that, in the name of cost-certainty, keeps the position quite mediocre.

AKIE BERMISS: I love me some books. No I really do. When I walk into a bookstore, I expect to come back out significantly poorer than when I walked in. If there’s any one thing that I’m easily distracted by — its probably books. And, unlike many people, I’ll never enjoy buying them online. I don’t feel satisfaction when a graphic of a book goes into my “shopping-cart” and then a week later a box shows up in my mail. No joy.

I need to go to the store. I need to see them in their element. I need to pick them out. And I need to take them home with me.

HOWARD MEGDAL: Like Akie, I do acknowledge a love for the Big Box Bookstores. But to cast aside the many other ways to acquire books- yes, I share his obsession with all things bibliorific- is an astonishing limitation I simply do not share.

ZOË RICE: While I was away at college, Barnes & Noble opened its first Brooklyn store, four blocks from my parents’ house. Park Slope, Brooklyn, was decidedly not a chain store neighborhood–the Starbucks wouldn’t come until later, and no, I still haven’t recovered–and here was a massive store, two levels, popping up right in my backyard. We had independent stores: Community Bookstore (still living), Booklink (no longer with us) and Booklink II (the first to go). Park Slope was known for being quite literary, with loads of editors and artistic types. B&N would not do. But then I visited it. And I realized Park Slope needed a Barnes & Noble.

AKIE BERMISS: When it comes to writing in books I’m at once a reverent love and a practical modernist. I feel like the sacred nature of books is a relic of ages past when a single book to quite some time to make. And getting a copy was pretty much impossible unless you were a person of great wealth or great importance. Nowadays, I can walking to a Barnes&Noble and buy four copies of Great Expectations faster than you could say “Who’s Charles Dickens?” So there’s really no need to be overly cautious about getting book marked up, or wet, or whatever.

ZOË RICE: I can’t say I understand treating a book like a revered object. In fact, I even marked up my own novel. I think I did so for my readings; I made notes and crossed out a passage or two that wouldn’t make sense without previous chapters. But I’ve always written in books. A note here and there about something I was thinking at the time, a star for a passage I particularly liked, perhaps a name of another book or a memory I recalled. And I love those notes. I love that I’ll be able to look back on them later in life and see what I was thinking years prior. The book is mine, and I’m certainly not erasing any part of it, so why not annotate here and there? Why not personalize?

HOWARD MEGDAL: I have now been through the process of publishing my own book. And let me tell you- it isn’t easy. You need to find an agent. You need to polish up a proposal. You need to find a publisher. You need to complete a manuscript in time. You need to go over edits, making certain that just because an editor didn’t know any vaguely Jewish terminology in a book about Jewish baseball players, that the entire point of the book isn’t obscured. You need to fight back against the idea that any joke that won’t be understood by a ten-year-old child should be excised from the book, reminding everyone involved that it is not, in fact, a children’s book.

CHRIS PUMMER: If the new fiery rhetoric is what it takes to push Republicans deep enough into a corner that governing might be done this year, Obama needs to bring more of it. Because action is required unless he want to see Republicans bring the house down on him in November.
AKIE BERMISS: I don’t mean to say that Obama’s stint at the GOP Retreat last week fielding questions and answering them with wit, aplomb, and gravitas is going to tear our whole society asunder.  But I do think that, when we look back on this administration and talk about what it was truly known for: this will be it.  Friday was a return to something politics has been missing for quite sometime: intellect.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is requesting a robotic stand-in for the furry favorite of the beloved Groundhog Day festival known ’round the world. PETA says it’s unfair to keep Phil in captivity and then subject him to huge crowds and bright lights every Feb. 2…

The animal is “being treated better than the average child in Pennsylvania,” William Deeley, president of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, said. The groundhog is kept in a climate-controlled environment and is inspected annually by the state Department of Agriculture.

-PETA Wants Robotic Groundhog to Replace Phil, January 27, 2010

JILLIAN LOVEJOY LOWERY: PETA’s newest concern is everyone’s favorite groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil. They propose that Phil be freed from his captivity and spared the attention that comes his way on February 2.

Really, PETA? Please.

HOWARD MEGDAL: Both PETA and Jill appear to be missing a much larger, disturbing point: the average child in Pennsylvania is, by the state’s own admission, treated worse than a groundhog.

ZOË RICE: I had been looking forward to what SNL would do with the State of the Union! Every time I see Biden and Pelosi behind the President, I immediately think of Sudeikis and Wiig, and here yet again they’re just funny there in the background, gesticulating. I thought it was a solid open, with good use of senator reaction shots to enhance the laughs. Of course the healthcare bit at the end was kind of depressing, but the Martha Coakley jokes and the gags about how the Bushes left the White House were chucklers.
STEVE MURPHY: I agree with Zoe, this was a “chuckler.” A couple little jokes, a couple funny reaction shots… but nothing got knocked out of the park in this sketch. I was ready for it to end long before it did.

HOWARD MEGDAL: Awfully scattershot. When Al Franken wrote SNL political sketches, they had clear targets and an underlying understanding of political realities. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to shake my fist at some children on my front lawn.

HOWARD MEGDAL: There is much that President Obama did well in tonight’s speech, though how much the speech succeeded will ultimately be determined by legislative action and the voters in 2010. But the most vital part of President Obama’s speech Wednesday night was placing the Democratic Party on the side of regulating Wall Street.

JESSICA BADER: The thing that struck me the most about Barack Obama’s first official State of the Union address was how comfortable, how in his element, he seemed while giving it. Even knowing what a gifted speaker the President is and the sense of calm he projects even when the going gets tough, I would have expected some amount of nervousness to seep through as he delivered this speech that will supposedly determine the fate of his presidency (at least until the pundits determine another pivotal moment to fixate on). Instead, he was witty and self-deprecating, not afraid to riff off of the reactions of the audience immediately in front of him even as he was explaining his agenda to the audience watching on a screen.

Like Obama has done throughout his time in the national spotlight, he found the right words, delivered them the right way and at just the right time.