Aww, man. I hate when I see these headlines. Robert Altman, one of my favorite directors of modern cinema, has died. He was a fucking genius, people. If you don't believe me, watch one of his movies. Any one of his movies, those which the critics loved (Nashville, M*A*S*H, The Player) or those which the critics did not (When You Comin' Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean; Popeye or Pret a Porter).

Tonight at the Casita de Zapatos, we will be having an Altman retrospective, including M*A*S*H, The Player (at least the 5-minute opening pan...what a shot) and Prairie Home Companion.

To continue this emphemeral pop-culture entry, what the fuck happened to Michael Richards? I never found him particularly funny, except intermitantly as Kramer, but still, I never suspected him of racism, either.

I'm not buying his explanation for one minute. I mean, there have been times when I've had blood in my eye, and a burning rage exploding in my brain, and it never once led me to use the "N" word, or to make approving remarks about lynchings. No, I think and hope that the industry analysis of this being a career-ending move are correct.

Many years ago, when the RLA and I lived in Clovis, New Mexico (Don't ask. Scorched earth epicenter of racism, hatred and all that is wrong with America) I was actually dragged down to the dean's office at the little community college where we were teaching, because I shoved a middle-aged student assistant up against a wall, and explained to her very firmly and with very naughty language why the use of the "N" word was not acceptable in my class room. I was told that what she did was protected by free speech, what I did was considered assault. I told the dean that I considered what she did racism, and what I did education. We agreed to disagree. I didn't teach there again.

And then we have O.J. and his now-cancelled book and tv special. Despite the publisher claiming that old chestnut free speech, and that as a victim herself of domestic violence she considered this his confession, and wait. I have to stop myself right there.

Yes, he had the right to write his book. That is free speech. I have the right not to buy it, or not to watch his television interview. That is free will. But somewhere between the two is the right of the publisher not to buy the manuscript and the right of the television network to turn down the proposal. Like so many other things in this life, just because you can doesn't mean that you should.

And it isn't a confession, at all, is it? It was explicitly NOT a confession. It was a nyah, nyah, nyah. It was a big old fuck you at the American system of jurisprudence and OJ's protection under double indemnity. What happens next, anybody can guess: some lunatic vigillante will probably gun OJ down on the streets of Miami. And unfortunately, Florida, unlike New Mexico, does not accept the defense of "he needed killin'".

Have I missed any of the week's highlights? Oh, yeah. TomKat. He's gay. She's brainwashed. The baby was by way of a turkey baster and/or test tube. Who are they kidding... And the quote by Georgio Armani, that the wedding was sealed by an "everlasting kiss"? Even that was a manufactured thing. A quote from one of The Boss's oldest, bestest songs: Born to Run.

Yeah! It's acting lessons this week on America's Next Top Model. Nobody in the house seems to give a rat's ass that Anchal, poor poor Anchal has been sent back to Homestead, Florida. I care. Nobody should have to go to Homestead, unless you are looking for a U-Pick tomato field, and those are all being turned into condominiums and housing developments with ridiculous names evocotive of things --like ocean views or mediterranean villages-- that are nowhere near Homestead. Of course, if you did name those places after things you can see in Homestead, you'd have developments with names like "Mount Trashmore Vistas", "Las Casitas des Trabodores Migrantes" and "Hurricane Andrew Decimated Us Farms" and I don't think people would buy them. But I digress.
Yes, acting lessons. Still in the running for becoming America's Next Top Model are Melrose the megalomaniac, CariDee of the loose screws, Eugena the official Black contestant still in game and with none of the dermatological services given to Yaya but no less deserving of same, Jaeda who Will NOT shut up about the hair already, and the twins: Blah and Bland. Who will have a breakdown on the stage? Who will rock the acting class and get a walk on part in another forgettable WC/WB/UPN show? Do any of us really care?

In what has to be one of the most shocking revelations to date, Jaeda cries and sobs and beats her breast over the agony of having had her hair cut. No. Really. CariDee cries and cries and cries that nobody in the house likes her (stole that one from her old friend Anchal) and that she knows what it's like to be sad. She tried to kill herself once. (Not hard enough, obviously. It must have been the heartbreak of psoriasis that led her to it.) Melrose gives it her all and screeches that nobody in the house has any right to say that their photos are better than hers and who the fuck do they think they are to judge her and so on. I have to say, that of all the hamsters, Melrose is the only one who understands that this is a competition, not just a Real Life reality show.

The challenge is to "act" while Tasha (Tyra's friendgirl and acting coach) shouts meaningless direction at them. This will be filmed and pieced together into a silent movie. They will be judged on their movies, and the winner will get the walk on, etc. etc. The silent movie consists of looking out of windows, opening doors, sobbing, answering a phone, eating a lemon and drinking prune juice. Where's Anchal now? She wouldn't have turned her little nose up a lemon and prune juice. Why lemons and prune juice? Why not. You can't actually make the girls eat poison, can you? And if it were something like a lettuce leaf or dry toast, they might actually like it.

CariDee wins. Whee for CariDee. Then there is the big reveal that they are, in fact, going to go to Barcelona*. That's in Spain. In Europe. Just in case you weren't sure. Tyra manages to come out in full flamenco drag.

In Barcelona, the girls are told they will be working with Spanish models, and are much relieved to discover that these are male models. They go to dinner together, where they are instructed to pair off and rehearse a commercial script (that they will be doing the next day... in Castelan, as opposed to High School Spanish, I suppose). None of the male models speak much English, and in what may be bad editing, bad communications, a terrible misunderstanding, or just some guy being an asshole, Jaeda's male model refuses to make out with her saying that he doesn't like it or want to or something. Jaeda takes this to mean, and tells everyone within earshot over the next day and a half that it means, he told her he doesn't like Black girls. That's not what I heard. It's not what the subtitles said, but this is a "reality" show, so your guess is as good as mine regarding the truth of the matter.**

Melrose stays up late, studying her lines. The other girls do or do not, but we don't see them. We do see them all whining (have I mentioned what a fucking WHINY bunch of hamsters they are this season) about how they can't speak Spanish. They can't roll their "r"s. They can't memorize the lines. Jaeda doesn't want to kiss anyone but her boyfriend and anyway this guy is a pig who doesn't like Black women. They are a pathetic bunch this season, really.

The next day, they go for their shoot, and CariDee sucks beyond all suckiness. She is trying to remember her lines by rolling her eyes far back enough in her head to read the script she tucked up under her skull, apparently. It's scary. The twins are ho-hum and hum-ho. Jaeda has a melt down about the kissing and the racism and the fact that she has short hair and the Castelan and the sun and the moon and the stars and everything in the world. She sucks at melting down, too. Eugena doesn't suck as much as she usually does at everything and Melrose rocks the shoot. Are we surprised?

Judging. Tyra says Eugena is now someone to watch. Why? Is she going to suddenly develop talent and good looks? The twins get to stay, because between them there is enough going on to make one good model. CariDee is once more noted as being a bi-polar freakazoid. Melrose is already boring us with how good she is, albeit older than dirt. And that leaves Jaeda. Where does it leave her? On the fucking plane back to the states where she can grow her hair and kiss her boyfriend all she wants and remember the halcyon days when she was the prettiest girl in school. What ever.

Next week: Bull fights?! Better than flamenco, for sure. Will they have to eat squid and eel tapas, too?

* We do not, unfortunately, get a visit from (or to) Manuel.

** This may also be the first week without the writers, but honestly, I saw no difference between the quality of the story arc in this episode and any of the first half of the season. Maybe with the writers we would have a definitive version of what Nacho (no, really, that was the goober's name) said to Jaeda.

Once in a while, the universe does its thing, justice is dispensed, and you get the satisfaction of hearing about it without having had to lift so much as an eyebrow in bringing it about. To quote one of my favorite lines, ever, from one of my favorite movies, ever:

Conan, what is good? TO CRUSH YOUR ENEMIES, TO DRIVE THEM BEFORE YOU, AND TO HEAR THE LAMENTATIONS OF THEIR WOMEN.
You may ask, so Miz Shoes, who was crushed? And I will answer, the old Pointy Haired Boss.

This guy here. The one sleeping at his desk.

And what was the straw that finally broke the camel's hump? The Pointy Haired Boss, the master of the Jackson Memorial Hospital web site, the manager who took my job, o he of little brain, he called the IT help desk and asked what, exactly is an ISS?

You know, if the fucking moron had just paid attention when I tried to teach him how to write a search string in Google, instead of relying on Ask Jeeves, maybe he'd still be there, fucking up.

Conan, what is good?

Item the first: Not all cars have automatic transmissions. Some of us old farts (and gear heads) drive something called a manual transmission or a "stick shift". If you've gone to movies like "The Fast and the Furious", any Bond movie, "Bourne Identity" or any film featuring race cars, you have seen the stick in action. It requires the use of a clutch and a gear stick to manually change the gear ratios in your engine, making use of said ratios to gain or reduce speed. With me? What this means in practical terms is that when we are all driving up a spiral ramp in a parking garage, I have nothing slower than first gear, unless you want to count rolling backwards. DO NOT, repeat, do not pound your brakes on the top of the spiral when you are driving in front of me. Although I keep a respectful distance from your rear fender, there is really nothing else I can do except stick it in neutral and play heel toe with the clutch and the brake and pray that I do NOT roll backward into the jackass who has his front grill stuck to my back bumper like I'm going to...
to do what? We are all in a line on a spiral parking ramp. What the fuck does he think I'm going to do? Pass the car in front of me, and thereby win the very last space in the lot?

Item the second: An elevator is fairly old technology by now. It should not be beyond the average person to understand how it works. However, this morning I learned that is not the case. So in an effort to help those recently deposited in the 21st century by a time/space worm hole, I will explain.

The elevator button only needs to be pressed once. If it is lit, it has already been pressed, and pounding on it will not make the elevator switch directions or arrive faster.

If the big arrow over the elevator door is lit up in green and pointing up, that means the elevator is going to go up. If the big arrow over the elevator door is lit up in red and pointing down, that means the elevator is going to go down. There are no other choices. It isn't trying to fuck with you by pointing up and then going down.

Once the doors open for you, you should enter the elevator and move to the back. Or to the side, if you are the first one in, and there is nobody else there. It is helpful to all the other people trying to get on the elevator to hold. the. door. open. Or you can press the button on the control panel that says "Door Open" and it will hold the door open for others. It actually speeds things up when the doors aren't shutting on people. Also? Moving to the rear of the compartment also speeds up the loading process because people don't have to shove around your fat ass to get into the elevator. The elevator is a public transit device and as such is designed to hold many people, not just you.

While I'm on the subject of packing people into small moving spaces, let's try the same concept out on busses and trains. If there is a door, go through it and keep moving. To the middle of the car. Standing in a doorway prevents others from getting on or off, slows things up, is discourteous and generally just lame.

Thank you. This ends today's lesson in modern technology.

Part the first: The Rude Pundit said it best on Wednesday morning when he said: Has anybody in this bed got a cigarette?

To quote the ur-progenitor of all the past six years of madness: It's morning in America.

To quote the American voting public: "Go fuck yourselves, arrogant Republican chicken-hawk constitution rapers."
Part the second: Miz Shoes Reviews: ANTM

We are back in the house with the bitches and the hos, and surprisingly we are still interested despite last week's recap show. To be fair, the high point of the recaps was watching the Queer Eye for the (Nominally) Straight Model Wanna-be. Well, that and the scene of the clinically insane Moooonique playing echo with Melrose. And the scene of the clinically insane Moooonique stomping on Doritos. To which we can only say, what the fuck was wrong with that girl?

Oh, well, we can also say this: How about a Supermodel Season on ANTM, where they bring back all the most delusional and insane B&Hs. A house filled with Camille, and Lisa, Tiffany and her weave, and Jade and Moooonique and Jayla and what's her name who wouldn't cut her hair and just walked out and the blind girl who wasn't blind when she had to leave in the dark of night, and of course Furonda. Can you imagine? And the judges would have to be equally unbalanced: the Divine Miss Dickenson and Naomi Campbell, whose name has finally been uttered by Tyrant. And she didn't hack up a hair ball or anything. Of course, if it was me that she likened to Naomi, I wouldn't have gotten all smiley and thank you. I would have gone back to the house and packed, thinking that next week it would be my head on the block. I'm just saying, that if you remind Tyra of Naomi? That cannot be a good thing.

So, where are we. Oh, yeah, back at the house with the bitches and the hos. Everyone is laying around thinking that there aren't so many of them anymore to get lost in the shuffle of who sucks the worst. There's a little pity party for Brooke, but not much of one. No, the bigger pity party is the one that Anchal is throwing for herself.

Allow me to sum up: Wah, wah, wah. Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I'm going to go off and make myself feel better by eating a few more pounds of bacon and then stress out over getting fatter not thinner and how come nobody in this house will shut up about my weight already, and why don't they like me? Wah, wah, wah, wah. Repeat ad nauseum.

The lesson this week is how to action model, and they are taught by none other than Gabrielle Reese, who really is the shit. See, this is why I used the title I did on this entry. This year I have liked more of the special guests and been more impressed with the photo shoots than any previous season.*

As expected, Caridee, Melrose, Michelle and Jaeda do well. Anchal sucks and doesn't want to wear a bikini and plays beach volley ball exactly as you would expect a girlygirly to play, which is to say, she all but closes her eyes when the ball comes at her and her dive toward it falls about four feet short of actually connecting with anything ball-like.

The next day, they have to do a shoot (and simultaneously shoot themselves using an infra-red shutter release, and frankly I think that's rather more multi-tasking than any of these girls could possibly handle under any circumstance) with some guy** from NASCAR who is allegedly a hottie and a part time model.

Michelle rocks it, and even climbs up on his car, puncturing the hood with her spike heels. Nicely done, tomboy. Nicely done. She totally commits to the shot. Guess who doesn't? Anchal? Anchal? Michelle wins her first challenge and gets to pick three friends. She picks Amanda, Caridee, and Melrose. MELROSE? Melrose whom everyone despises? What up? The four of them get to go on a free shopping spree at some shop run by? owned by? featuring clothes by? the nameless NASCAR guy. To keep the theme going, they have 30 seconds to run from the starting line into the show room***, grab as much shit as they can carry and get back to the line. Whoever has the most stuff wins, and gets to keep not only her shit, but all the other girls' shit, too. Melrose is the only one paying enough attention to figure out the rules, which means that she wins, much to Michelle's chagrin. And since the whole thing is edited for effect, we have no way of knowing if Melrose was a total dick and didn't share the spoils with the girl who took her to the dance.

The other girls, the girls who are not part of the winner's spree, all bitch and moan and piss and whine about having to be there to see the other girls shop. I may be getting soft, but this season's hamsters still strike me as being the most ungrateful little whiners to date. Jaeda and the hair. Anchal and the nobody likes me. All of them and Melrose is a bitch. Wahwahwah, already. To complain that they have to watch the winners have a good time? Please, girl, just be glad you didn't have to massage Jade.

Next, they have the challenge photo: reaching for product while (in-door) sky-diving. OK, all of you who WOULD have liked to see Mr. Jay toss them out from 20 thousand feet, raise your hands. They all suck. Jay offers up this direction to Melrose: Give it to me, girl; make them all hate you more! Amanda manages to look good, Michelle only sort of. Anchal, despite wanting to in-door skydive all her life, and despite being the only girl to manage a decent angle, still sucks. Ditto Eugenia, et. al.

Panel! The in-person contest is totally lame. Using techniques from improv classes I took 30 years ago in college, the judges pull out an action verb and an adjective for each girl to try to do. Swim frighteningly. Dance aggressively. And so on. Anchal, poor poor Anchal is asked to dance aggressively and needless to say, she fails dramatically. She also runs out of the room. Do you want to guess who gets sent home?

The bottom two are Michelle and Anchal. Michelle is a natural, the judges say, but she just doesn't Want. It. ENOUGH. Like, say, her twin sister. Or Caridee, who the judges are finally beginning to figure out is insane. Or Melrose, who is maybe or maybe not a total bitch, but who, like Lisa, despite being older than dirt and abrasively know-it-all, manages every week to turn out a fierce pic.

So who goes home? Anchal, poor, poor, Anchal, who ran out of the judging panel. Bad move, there, sweetie. Next week they finally travel, and if Tyra isn't geographically dyslexic, it looks like they are going to Spain. Please, oh please, do not make them try to learn flamenco.

* Yeah, yeah, yeah. For a fat girl, she don't sweat so very much.

** What? You think I would watch NASCAR? Puh-leeze people. That's driving in circles. Real racing is Grand Prix racing with, you know, straight aways, hair-pins and wiggly bits.

*** Also known as a Grand Prix start. Ahem.

Born here, although I'm not supposed to call myself a Native American on surveys and census questionaires, which, frankly, I think is sort of a rip. I AM, after all, native to these shores. As such, and since I am not a convicted felon, it is my right (some people, myself included, would say that it is my duty) to cast a vote in every election. And I do. I haven't missed so much as a vote for dog catcher* since I turned 18. I think I had a voter's registration card before I had a driver's license.

So first thing this morning, I went and pounded the shit out of that tacky little electronic device that can't give me a paper reciept. I even voted for a Republican. Not for anything very important, only the Commissioner of Agriculture, and I can't even tell you why, except that I just felt that if there was at least one R in the vote, maybe the (hacked) machine wouldn't eliminate my vote.**

If you live and vote in California, please vote for my old fellow traveler, Larry Cafiero, Green Candidate for Insurance Commissioner.

If you live and vote anywhere, read the Rude Pundit before you go.

If you don't vote, well, first of all, Shame on you. Second of all, shut the fuck up about what you think of our elected government, good or bad, because you pissed away your chance to do something about it. And third of all, when the jack-booted neo-con christian jihadists come to your door to cart you away, remember that you didn't vote. And remember that there were plenty of us out here in the wilderness shrieking warnings like banshees.

* Do people still vote for dog catcher? Is there still the position of dog catcher somewhere out in the fly-overs?

**Come ON, people. I live in South Florida. You don't think there is some serious Republican party-backed shit going down here? Puh-leeze. You have been drinking the Kool-Aid again, haven't you?