Fight Cancer With a Mustache

Farley Ad Goes Too Far?

ComicsAlliance: Bootleg Superheroes

StreetLevel: Worst NBA Rappers

Profile

  • Diggem the Frog
  • Member Since Jun 26th, 2007

Are you Diggem the Frog? If So, Login Here.

Recent Comments:

Will Bloody Texting PSA Get The Message To Teens? {ParentDish}

Aug 25th 2009 11:00PM My experience tells me not. When I was in driver's ed, we saw more than one film about driving accidents and their aftermath. One depicted actual accidents and their mangled victims, and then added the audio portion so we could hear them screaming bloody murder. Another film was an almost feature-length documentary about an actual man who was paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident in the 50s, and eventually regained the use of his arms but was told that was as much as he could hope for. "It's been a long way back", he says at the beginning and the end, in case that rings any bells in your head.

Everyone in my class saw these shows. Less than a year later, I went to the school party on graduation night, and observed that some of my classmates appeared to be drunk. I asked around where I could get a beer, and was told that most of these students had been drinking before they came. "Then how'd they get here?" I asked. "They drove", the guy replied. "Drunk?" I asked incredulously. "Yeah." He didn't seem the least bit worried or astonished. One of the drunks was a boy who'd sat right beside me when those films were being screened. He obviously wasn't impressed. A couple of months later, he was involved in a particularly tragic accident that left another boy paralyzed from the neck down. All five or six of the boys involved had been drunk at the time.

TV News Daily {Inside TV Blog}

Apr 11th 2009 7:34AM "Canceled" isn't the word to describe the end of "Prison Break". It's not being canceled; it's ending. The story has run its course. Actually, it could have ended after the second season, with the brothers escaping to Panama or some other Latin American country. Or they could have devoted the third season to going after the conspirators in framing Lincoln for murder (in particular the Vice President, who disappeared from the show without explanation after the second season. I would have appreciated a follow-up on her story.)

"Canceling" a show is when it ends with no resolution, leaving all the plot threads hanging. It still happens a lot, of course, because many shows don't do well enough to justify their production costs and the network has to cut its losses. That's unfortunate, but inevitable. I, for one, am grateful for every show that has ever been allowed to actually "end", to give its fans some "closure", just as we like to have closure regarding our relationships with real people. We just like to know what eventually became of them.

FOX has actually been fairly generous in this practice, when they can afford to be. They allowed many shows to run their course, even though they seemed to be running out of steam: "Arrested Development", "Melrose Place", "The OC", and now "Prison Break". There were also a lot of shows that FOX canceled at the end of their first season -- so many, in fact, that I've been trying to make an alphabet with them. How many of you out there remember any of these shows:

Back to You
Casino, The
Fastlane
Justice
On the Lot
Performing As
Standoff

I was a fan of all of them, except "The Casino". Since they each got a full season, that greatly improves their chance of getting their one season eventually released on DVD, or getting a time slot on TV Land. Now what about all the shows that didn't last their first season -- what can we do about them?

Horror Movie Cliches {Inside Movies Blog}

Dec 9th 2008 5:02AM I'd like to add a cliche I've noticed. Well, actually it's not so much a cliche as a lesson of life that some writers of horror films find useful: Never place your hand where you can't see it.

Most of us have heard this warning. But how many times have you ignored it? How many times have you reached under a vending machine to retrieve a coin, regardless of a possible venomous spider or rusty thumbtack? That's about the worst that you can expect to happen to you in real life. But horror films can project that completely rational fear into the darkest, most unexplored areas of the subconscious. And even as we're yelling at the idiot onscreen, the voice in our heads is telling us, "Don't blame him. You'd probably do the same thing if you were him and you didn't realize you were in a scary movie."

Here are some movies in which people stuck their hand -- or their whole arm -- into a hidden area, with consequences of varying severity:

The Blood on Satan's Claw (1970)
The Food of the Gods (1975)
Kingdom of the Spiders (1977)
Creepshow (1982)
Gremlins (1984)

Horror Movie Cliches {Inside Movies Blog}

Dec 9th 2008 4:42AM Dear AJ (#24, 11/23/08),

One movie that uses the cliche of the cat is the second "Friday the 13th" installment. As for "Why So Obvious?" -- I don't think it is.

Horror Movie Cliches {Inside Movies Blog}

Dec 9th 2008 4:36AM Dear Rachel (Comment #22, from 10/29/08),

In answer to your query, What is the movie for "How Many Horror Movie Characters Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb?"

I've seen at least one such movie, "Grave of the Vampire" (1972). You've never heard of it unless you're a real fan of horror films -- not new ones, and not classic ones, but the most obscure and laughably bad ones. This one's cheesier than the nachos you eat in the theater. Someday I'll post my review of it on Moviefone or Netflix or imdb.com.

America's Most Hated Foods {Slashfood}

Oct 27th 2008 12:30PM #1 -- LIVER: Well, it's not the best thing in the world for you, but it won't kill you if you only eat it every second Sunday night. We used to have fried liver and onions not infrequently when I grew up. A few years ago I had them again, in a British pub. Shortly after, I tried to cook some at home, but I wasn't satisfied with the results. I think it's time to try again.

Another good way to eat liver is chopped. Chopped liver is pretty much a staple of Jewish delis. It ain't pate, but it's good both as a sandwich spread and as a dip. It's also sold in tubs in grocery stores, although I can't seem to find it there.

Then too, of course, there's liverwurst, but most kinds are only 10-20% ground liver, so that really doesn't count.

Two Octobers ago I had a dish called leberkasse at the Oktoberfest put on by the local German-American Society. They did a great job, as always, but leberkasse turned out not to be my favorite German dish by a long stretch.

Well, that's my take on America's 20 most Hated. Now I need to take a break, but sometime later on, let me tell you what foods I was expecting to see on the list.

America's Most Hated Foods {Slashfood}

Oct 27th 2008 11:52AM #2 -- LIMA BEANS: No opinion here, believe it or not. If I've ever eaten lima beans (wait, shouldn't "lima" be capitalized, like the city it was named after?), I wasn't paying attention, because I don't remember anything about them.

America's Most Hated Foods {Slashfood}

Oct 27th 2008 11:43AM #3 -- MAYONNAISE: I'm not a fan of it either. In fact, I recently threw out a whole jar of it that probably went over months ago. I never noticed, because that's how long it's been since I used any. I ended up using two, maybe three spoonfuls.

It's not that I don't like the taste, exactly. I just don't like to think about how much of it gets into my arteries. That cured me of my longing for it very effectively. Basically, it's cholesterol in a jar.

Years ago, when I still made sandwiches with canned tuna fish, I got the idea of substituting horseradish sauce for mayo. It's appreciably less fatty and healthier, and I learned to like the extra tang it imparts. Not recommended for Waldorf salads, though.

America's Most Hated Foods {Slashfood}

Oct 27th 2008 11:24AM #4 -- MUSHROOMS: Why do so many people shrivel at the sight of mushrooms? Probably from being warned by their parents not to pick any. That's good advice, to be sure, because some species are very poisonous. But some species are not only edible but a good source of certain vitamins, minerals and fiber.

Some of the complainants on this site say that mushrooms are dirty, feel slimy and taste rubbery. They certainly are dirty -- because they grow in dirt, like vegetables. So be sure to wash them off before you eat them! They also start getting slimy if you let them go more than a few days after they're picked. So use them soon after you buy them! As for the charge that they have a rubbery consistency, I concur. If that's what bothers you about them, cook them well! Mushrooms are best eaten cooked anyway, because that removes a substance called agaritine, which the body metabolizes into a known cancer-causing agent.

By the way, the Chinese eat not only mushrooms but wood ears and a "Chinese caterpillar fungus", which is eaten mainly for a number of medicinal uses.

America's Most Hated Foods {Slashfood}

Oct 27th 2008 10:05AM #5 -- EGGS: I started using Egg Beaters around the turn of the century, I'm guessing, when my cholesterol level started to rise mysteriously. Ever since, I only eat "the real thing" very seldom, usually when a recipe calls for it and the yolks and the whites have to be separated. Egg Beaters are "the real thing", basically -- they contain both yolk and white -- mixed together, unfortunately -- but somehow technology has found a way to extract most of the yolk's damaging cholesterol.

That's fine with me, because I've never much liked my eggs fried, poached or hard-boiled. I agree with some of the other bloggers about hard-boiled eggs: The whites are too chewy and rubbery, and the yolks do smell of sulfur sometimes. Scrambled is my way to eat them. I've never noticed them to smell sulfurous that way -- and I live in Florida, where the water used to be so sulfurous that at times it smelled like rotten eggs!

By the way, I never eat them straight up -- only in recipes, either in omelets or absorbed into dough or batter. I recently learned from the VideoJug website how to make an Indian omelet called egg bhurjee. Pretty tasty, although I can't figure out how to add chili powder without turning the omelet a repulsive beige.