Hey all--haven't done one of these in a while, so here goes.  Stuff I've been thinkin' about, in no particular order and with no unifying logic:
-They're saying Obama's Inauguration is going to be the most expensive ever.  I'm saying that's not cool.  It wasn't cool when Bush's 2nd Inaugural in 2004 was a super lavish affair while two wars were going on, and it's less cool now.  Those two wars are still going on, and things are much worse in several other regards.  I'm not giving Obama a pass because he's of the same political party I am.  And yeah, yeah--I've heard the excuses:  The Inauguration is a grand tradition so the expense is worth it, most of the cost is paid for by private donors, blah blah blah.  At the risk of sounding like an 85 year old curmudgeon, why aren't we exercising restraint?  Why aren't those private donors putting those wads of cash to better use than a party for rich people?  Why isn't Obama encouraging them to do so?  I like a party as much as the next guy, but seriously.
-I was saddened to hear about the death of Ricardo Montalban, but another one that saddened me recently--and which didn't get much attention--was the death of Paul Benedict.  Who's that guy?  If you've watched The Jeffersons, he was the dude who played Bentley, their white bread neighbor.  More recently, he'd reliably pop up in the movies of Christopher Guest (most notably in a small but crucial role in Waiting for Guffman); the stuff he did in those movies was always super subtle yet pitch perfect.  I'll miss seeing him pop up in Guest's next movie.  R.I.P., man.
-Can we pleeeeeaaase stop encouraging Diablo Cody?  Please?  Juno was super overrated, her column in Entertainment Weekly sucks (save for a pretty cool one she wrote in praise of Judy Blume), and now there's this awful-looking United States of Tara show.  The one that's supposed to be, you know, like Sybil, but funny?  Come on, people--Sybil is the funny version of Sybil!  My point is, Diablo Cody, like her name, is stupid and tiresome and she must be stopped.
-Speaking of Entertainment Weekly, I have a message for Michael Ausiello of The Ausiello Files:  If I want to read Jackie Harvey, I'll read The Onion.
-Speaking of things that suck, I am laughing so hard and mentally saying "I told you so" to all the Grey's Anatomy fans who are up in arms that the show now features sex with ghosts and other nonsense.  I told you this show was awful, but you didn't believe me?  WHY didn't you believe me?!?
-But let's talk about good shows:  As mentioned in this space before, a new season of Flight of the Conchords officially started last night on HBO at 10 pm (but the premiere was available at funnyordie.com and hbo.com before that).  Anyway, this show rules and you MUST watch.  You'll thank me later.  Also, Season 1 is available on DVD, and by the way, the ratings for Season 1 were just so-so, so if you don't watch, they could cancel the show.  Don't let this show be another Arrested Development!  In other news, Mondays at 9:30 there's a show on CBS called Worst Week which is hilarious.  This dude (played by Kyle Bornheimer, who is a brilliant comic actor--you've probably seen him in the tons of commercials he's done) every week unintentionally does something which horrifies his in-laws.  That's it, but it's super, super funny.  And yeah, it sounds like a total rip-off of Meet the Parents...the main difference being, as I mentioned, Worst Week is funny.
-This is another show that's great but I'm putting it in its own category.  Being unemployed in the latter part of last year, I got back into the habit of watching Letterman after a long absence.  And man, that guy still ROCKS!  He is (and always will be) one of my idols.  Sure, he's more middle-of-the-road these days than he was at the early days of NBC (heck, he's even more middle-of-the-road now than he was back in '93 when he started at CBS), but he's still hilarious.  Annoying tendency to repeat monologue jokes from one night to the next aside, he's still one of funniest people alive, and I will never, EVER figure out why anyone prefers Leno to him.  It ain't right, people.  Speaking of which, I'd be pretty pissed these days if I were Conan O'Brien:
"The good news:  You're getting The Tonight Show.  The bad news:  You're still going to be following Leno, who will still get the top tier guests over you, in a move that's making it look like the network is totally second-guessing its decision to promote you.  But still:  The Tonight Show!"
-Here are some really good movies I've seen recently (these are probably old news to most of you, but they're new finds to me through the magic of Netflix):
  -Persepolis
  -Once
  -The Ten
  -The Visitor
-These films, however, were a disappointment:
  -Step-Brothers (I mean, I didn't expect it to be a masterpiece, but still...)
  -The Foot Fist Way
  -Strangers With Candy (the TV show was great; the movie...eh)
-Here are some TV ads which I hate (in no particular order):
  -McDonald's "Nuggnuts" McNuggets ads.  So I'm assuming that someone, at some point, brought up the fact that these ads are basically calling their patrons a term which sounds very much like "numbnuts", and that they were OK with it anyway.  All right, then.  Then again, this is a company which, several years ago, launched Internet ads featuring the phrase "Double Cheeseburger?  I'd hit that."  I kid you not.  The ads were pulled after the company decided that they, nor anyone else, would want to have intercourse with a Double Cheeseburger.
  -That car ad where shoes rain from the sky, and women flood the streets to pick up shoes and put them in their cars, and the message is something stupid like "This car is the next best thing to shoes raining down on you" or something.  Besides the obvious grossly sexist message ("Women and their shoes!  Am I right?", the dude in the commercial standing on the sidewalk eating a sandwich, rolling his eyes at the hussies clawing each other for free shoes), there's the annoying detail that they're randomly grabbing at individual shoes.  How do they know they have any matching pairs?  OK, so that part of it is only annoying if you're OCD like me.  But it's still annoying.
  -The series of ads I like to refer to as "The Glade Lying Nincompoop".  I'm sure you've seen these; this woman uses Glade products but goes to great lengths to totally lie about using them...to everyone.  I can't imagine what the sales pitch for this series of ads was like:
"We have a recurring character who just so happens to be a compulsive liar.  And, she can't imagine a worse fate than admitting to using your company's products:  That's where the compulsive lying comes in!"
OK, I think that's all the typing I need to do for right now.  Peace out, holmes.
Regards,
Helmet Head