What am I going to do on Friday night now? Last night, Bill Maher closed out this season of Real Time With Bill Maher. The following clip includes the opening skit in which Maher sarcastically argues for amnesty so our children won't have to "get off their boney asses" and do something. New Rules follow the opening skit and Maher ends the season with a critique of the Democratic Party as enablers of the failed Bush presidency...and a history lesson on the "suckiest" presidents.
I will now have to wait until August to get my fix of Maher snark...woe is me.
Daniel DiRito | May 26, 2007 | 6:24 PM |
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I'm a big Natalie Portman fan and she plays a character named Nuni in this SNL skit. It's one of the more bazaar skits I've seen on SNL in a while...which is probably why I liked it so much. It reminds me of SNL from a number of years back when you would watch a segment and when it was over you would say to yourself "What was that? I don't know but it was funny."
Daniel DiRito | May 21, 2007 | 7:19 PM |
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Bill Maher tackles the meaning of Jerry Falwell's death. Like so many others, Maher points out a handful of quotes from Falwell to make his point that "name dropping god" has proven an effective strategy for the religious right. He suggests that gay men adopt the same strategy and make homosexuality a religion.
Daniel DiRito | May 19, 2007 | 8:37 PM |
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Jon Stewart has some fun with the latest GOP presidential debate. Stewart demonstrates that there is virtually no limit to the effort of each candidate to prove their conservative credentials as they engage in an escalating game of one-upmanship.
Daniel DiRito | May 17, 2007 | 10:55 PM |
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Thought Theater continues its exclusive coverage of the Miss Jihad - 2007 competition from Baghdad. The four week reality television program format narrowed the field to five semi-finalists over the weekend. In order to reach the semi-finals, the contestants have had to endure a grueling array of competitive challenges.
The formal competition saw several contestants collapse from heat exhaustion as the judges failed to account for the high temperatures when instituting the requirement that all participants wear a well known classic and century’s old big black burkha.
The border breech event proved to be quite a challenge as the competition committee increased the contraband weight requirement from thirty to fifty pounds. The change was facilitated by last years removal of the controversial ban on the use of Simplicity's updated burkha sewing pattern. That pattern added a full five inches to the waistline circumference of the burkha...a modernization that liberals have been touting for years. Conservatives finally acquiesced when several studies demonstrated the higher contraband capacities.
Stay tuned for updates and the eventual announcement of Miss Jihad - 2007.
Daniel DiRito | May 14, 2007 | 4:06 PM |
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Bill Maher, ever topical and always on the mark, provides another great set of New Rules. He discusses the National Guard's reduced ability to respond to natural disasters and he takes a swipe at the president's sketchy service by suggesting that the last time a National Guardsman was able to be in two places at once was during George Bush's tenure.
Daniel DiRito | May 14, 2007 | 8:36 AM |
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The episode was called “The Beard"…and it aired during the sixth season of the popular television show Seinfeld. The following dialogue takes place between Jerry and Elaine and it is a testament to good writing and the ability to say more with less.
Jerry: Oh no. Don't tell me. You like him?
Elaine: He's incredible.
Jerry: Yeah, but?
Elaine: Yeah, I know.
Jerry: So?
Elaine: What?
Jerry: Not conversion. You're thinking conversion?
Elaine: Well it did occur to me.
Jerry: You think you can get him to just change teams? He's not going to suddenly switch sides. Forget about it.
Elaine: Why? Is it irrevocable?
Jerry: Because when you join that team it's not a whim. He likes his team. He's set with that team.
Elaine: We've got a good team.
Jerry: Yeah, we do. We do have a good team.
Elaine: Why can't he play for us?
Jerry: They're only comfortable with their equipment.
Elaine: We just got along so great.
Jerry: Of course you did. Everyone gets along great when there's no possibility of sex.
Elaine: No, no, no, I sensed something. I did sense something. I perceived a possibility Jerry.
Jerry: You realize you're venturing into uncharted waters.
Elaine: I realize that.
Jerry: Are you that desperate?
Elaine: Yes I am.
In the words of Oscar Wilde, “Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life." Is such the case with the conversion of a well known Evangelical leader to Catholicism?
The president of the Evangelical Theological Society, an association of 4,300 Protestant theologians, resigned this month because he has joined the Roman Catholic Church.
The May 5 announcement by Francis J. Beckwith, a tenured associate professor at Baptist-affiliated Baylor University in Waco, Tex., has left colleagues gasping for breath and commentators grasping for analogies.
One blogger likened it to Hulk Hogan's defection from the World Wrestling Federation to the rival World Championship Wrestling league.
"This is a sad day for all true sons and daughters of the Protestant Reformation, for all who lived and died for its truths," Douglas Groothuis, a professor at the evangelical Denver Seminary, said in a posting on Beckwith's own blog, adding sternly: "...you are embracing serious theological error."
Beckwith said his decision reflects how dramatically the divisions between evangelicals and Catholics have narrowed in recent decades, as they have stood shoulder to shoulder on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and school vouchers.
On his blog last week, he said he wrestled with whether to inform the Evangelical Theological Society immediately of his intention to return to Catholicism, or to wait until the end of his term in November. He said he and his wife prayed for guidance and received an answer when a 16-year-old nephew asked him to take part in his Catholic confirmation ceremony tomorrow. "I could not do that unless I was in full communion with the church," Beckwith said.
And there you have it. Which episode is reality and which one is sharp witted comical genius? I guess I’ve concluded that art and life are one and the same…only sometimes it’s difficult to decide which is funnier.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with Mr. Beckwith’s conversion. However, I do find it humorous that in the world of religion the switching of teams would warrant such debate and discussion. I guess it’s akin to the Yankees and Red Sox battling for the services of a key player…a classic battle of good versus evil as both sides jockey to find that one last ingredient to assure everlasting victory.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but if religion is about the worship of God, why do we need so many different teams? I’ve decided that the only solution is to write the sequel…the one where God lines up all the teams on judgment day and while fighting back a bad case of the giggles, he announces that he has decided to open the gates of heaven to the atheists…because, like him, they at least have a sense of humor.
Daniel DiRito | May 12, 2007 | 9:10 AM |
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Jon Stewart, with his unique wit, skewers the participants in the first GOP presidential debate. What I find so refreshing is Stewart's ability to find and point to absurd remarks and seemingly unexplainable facial expressions that so often go unnoticed or ignored by the main stream media. The placating pomp associated with political reporting and the unspoken rules of "serious" news have no place on The Daily Show...which is exactly what makes it such a refreshing deviation from the stale and structured presentations one finds on CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. Thank goodness for Jon Stewart!
Daniel DiRito | May 9, 2007 | 10:42 AM |
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Bill Maher touched on the GOP's predisposition to make fun of everything French. As it turns out, the conservative candidate won the French election to become the next president, a move that may signal a thawing in the Bush administration's previous cold shoulder treatment.
Rumor has it french-fries will make a return to the White House menu...but the Democrats will now have to pass on these politically charged hot potatoes.
Daniel DiRito | May 7, 2007 | 10:34 PM |
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Little Britain, a sitcom from the United Kingdom, chronicles the escapades of Daffyd, a gay man in a remote Welsh city. He likes the other inhabitants to think he is the only homosexual in the area. In this clip, Daffyd wants his pals to know that he is bored. If you enjoy British humor, you'll like this program.
Daniel DiRito | May 7, 2007 | 10:09 PM |
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I did a posting quite a while back on how people pick drag names and I ended the posting with a list of drag names that had food as the theme. Thought Theater readers had a lot of fun with the posting so I though I would bring it back with a new theme...anything medical. My starter list is at the end of the posting...feel free to add your own in the comments and we'll see how many we can create. Oh, I've also included a link to a site that will create a drag name for you...it's just before my list of names at the bottom of this entry.
It's common knowledge that a drag queens name may be as important as the rhinestone regalia he/she wears. The conventional approach (although I would say that it's more urban legend than actual fact) is to take the name of your first pet and add it to your mother's maiden name and voila...you have your drag name. Chances are you won't like the name if you try it...of course that's only if you were inclined to have a drag name. As with Seinfeld speak...not that there's anything wrong with that.
I ran across an interesting article that indicates that there is an art to name selection and to become an actual namer is no easy task. The study of names is an adjunct to the study of linguistics and dialects and given the attached humor it seems to get the lion's share of the attention. The article is from the San Francisco Chronicle (duh!) and I've included some interesting excerpts below. Following the article segments (full article here)
"My drag queen name, for the record," said Professor Ronald C. Butters of Duke University, speaking between academic paper presentations in a beige room on the second floor of the Oakland Marriott, "is Coco Butters."
The room tittered appreciatively. If any crowd of buttoned-up academics could enjoy a good drag queen name, this was it. Butters was presiding over a recent panel on "Queer Names of Stage, Screen and Fiction" at the American Names Society conference, held in conjunction with the Linguistic Society of America, the American Dialect Society and three other groups. The conference, held in early January, drew people from all over the country and the world, and, in addition to official business (the Linguistic Society's vote on "Word of the Year," for instance), there were three days of overlapping panels and paper presentations.
The subjects covered by American Name Society, though, stood out in a sea of obscure papers on obscure topics. Perhaps the broader appeal of its work has to do with the universal nature of its mission statement; the society, founded in 1951, "seeks to find out what really is in a name."
Who knew that although drag queens usually employ sexual innuendo or humor in their stage names, it is strikingly uncommon for male gay porn stars to do so? Apparently, bland names are perceived to be more attractive.
Unsurprisingly, many drag queens chose honorifics such as Lady and Miss and upwardly mobile names like Xaviar Onassis Bloomingdale or, less frequently, overtly lower-class monikers such as Winnie Baygo or Mary K. Mart. Ethnic stereotypes got some play too, with China Silk and Bang Bang Ledesh.
How does one become a namer? Members of the American Name Society enter the world of naming from many directions.
Ed Lawson, a professor emeritus at SUNY Fredonia and former president of the American Name Society, was a psychologist who studied stereotypes before focusing on names. In one study, he selected a group of young women with "ethnically nonspecific faces" and gave them three ethnically distinctive names for three groups of subjects. Sure enough, Lawson found that people's impressions were colored by the perceived culture of the names. "The Jewish girls were labeled smart, the Italian girls were seen as passionate, and so on, " Lawson said.
When asked about the persistent Internet meme about how to choose a porn star name (some combination of first pet's name or mother's maiden name or your middle name with the street name of your first address), Zwicky laughed. "No, I didn't see any evidence of those games at play in my study. I, for one, couldn't get a good porn name from that. My first dog's name was Spot."
But as Zwicky noted in his presentation, he has no data on what, if any, impact a name has on a porn career.
A name isn't a porn star's most salient feature.
I found another site that lets you enter your real name and it will create a drag name for you...from what I can tell the names it assigns are random...but it's still fun to see the names it generates
OK, now on to the fun. Here's my list of "medical" drag names:
Angie O. Plasty - That ought to get your blood flowing again.
Sister Ectomy - Can you have your sister removed?
Carlin Oscopy - Isn't that a kick in the backside?
Ginger Vitis - I hear she can remove her teeth.
Halle Tosis - Poor girl has never been kissed.
Amie O. Centesis - After all, you want to know if she's a boy or a girl, right?
Carmen Electralytes - You're gonna need some of this after all those drinks.
Anna Stesia - She's cute but boring...she'll put you to sleep in no time.
Wanda Cass Tration - She'll make your mamas and papas scream.
Gina Lola Frigida - Hot as hell but cold as ice.
Aunty Biotic - She's the one for you if you've been a really bad boy or girl.
Barri M. Enema - Shake shake shake...shake your booty.
Cesaria Section - She's a hotty...but she's been known to leave you scarred for life.
Kathi Terizenem - It's gonna hurt like hell when she pulls it out.
Madame Ovary - They wrote a book about her exploits.
OK, now it's your turn...I've gotta run...I'm late for my Doctor's appointment.
Daniel DiRito | May 2, 2007 | 7:05 PM |
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