I haven't seen the new Pink Panther and rather imagine I will not, having seen the promos (not to mention the utterly execrable pre-show short at Clearview cinemas).

I can't help but think what this movie could have been had they just swapped roles: imagine Kevin Klein as Clouseau and Martin as the bureaucrat. Klein, doing a mix of his characters from A Fish Called Wanda and French Kiss, but contained by the straitjacket of Clouseau's incompetence, and Martin as, essentially, Herbert Lom (whose slow burns, manic twitches and self destructive psychotic breaks were, for me, often the best part of the Panther films).

The problem with the new Panther is that Sellers was a subtle comic while Martin works broadly (Little Shop of Horrors contains one of my favorite Martin characters, and Martin's broad humor was a perfect foil for Michael Caine's more subtle comic turn in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels).

Sellers' Clouseau derived his humor from the character's utterly unjustified self confidence while, really, the actor played it straight. Martin doesn't do straight, and thus his Clouseau doesn't work; he's just kind of annoying.

But oh, what it might have been.

is to elect a Democrat to the office.

Then watch how fast the press and the republicans do a complete 180 to claim the president has no powers whatsoever.

I said during the 2000 election that George Bush could burn the Constitution while screwing a goat in the rose garden and the press corps would gaze at him in rapt adoration and applaud when he was done. This has basically come true. Excpet that Bush has shredded the Constitution and screwed the entire nation. And the press still treats a man with approval ratings in the 20s and 30s as a God King. And the gutless Democrats tremble, fall the their knees and bow thier heads, begging to be allowed a scrap or two of pork from their master's table while promising to be good and not ask any questions or do anything that is NOT ALLOWED.

We're doomed.

When Katrina hit, millions of people gave money - at the supermarket, through web sites, etc. - has anyone figured out what happened to all that money?

If not, why not? How could billions be donated and apparently none of it got to the people we meant it to go to? I'm sure I didn't give a couple of hundred dollars so that some casinos could refurbish their lobbies.

When VCRs were new, the studios used to sell their movies for ludicrous prices and argued that people not buying at that price meant that, "nobody wanted to buy them." In reality it was the studios trying to stifle the new home-viewing market to prop up theatre revenues and ad revenues in showing their films on commercial TV. Of course when DVDs hit the market 20 years later at $15 a pop, peoeple bought whoile libraries of movies and TV shows.

Now the netowrks are panicing over the reality that they are dinosaurs who add ZERO value to the media equation. The simple fact is that, with things like iTunes, DVDs and broadband internet, people can easily buy their entertainment directly from the producers. There is no longer any need for the nets. And this has them terrified of losing their phony-baloney jobs.

Seriously, what value do the networks add? With TiVO, nobody watches their obsessively crafted scheduling ploys designed to maximize viewership by freezing out competitive shows that people might want to watch on other nets. Nobody but them cares about the infantile pissing contests around who "Owns" what night of the week. With no public benefit and no economic benefits accruing to viewers from the nets, why even have them?

The $5 TV show, like the $75 movie, is NBC's attempt to stifle online buying of "their" TV shows -- remember that NBC produces almost none of "their" programming other than news and talks shows, they lease them from the actual producers. The producers should just make the nets a small part of their operations. Lease to NBC and Apple at similar prices and let the market decide.

But this is modern American capitalism!! Markets are only free if billionaires control them. We can't have the stupid proles making buying choices on their own! That would be... socialism! Or something bad like that!

I still love the Onion's take on the "wardrobe malfunction":

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30883

Especially the last line: "Wasserbaum added that children who saw the televised breast in Europe, Australia, and various other nations throughout the world were somehow unaffected by the sight."

The weird American aversion to/obsession with nudity has always puzzled me. It's about time we grew up.

Now if we could just learn that buying a gun and shooting people isn't the perfect solution to every problem I might have some hope for the future.

"Her performance is like joy let out of a box."

THAT was nicely phrased. :-)

(good review, too)