Football & movies

Here are my playoff picks, which I’m posting just as the Jets and Bengals kickoff. Let’s start with that one: the Jets will gain 735 yards rushing and win by 10. Chad Ochocinco will score the only Bengals TD, after which he will strip nude and pantomime having rough sex with Commissioner Goodell.

Eagles defeat the Cowboys by 3 because everyone knows you can’t beat the same team three times in one season. Post game, Jerry Jones burns down his new stadium and Donovan McNabb leaves his wife for Jessica Simpson, making the ‘Pokes 0 for 3 on the day.

Tomorrow: the Pats over Baltimore by 17. Ray Lewis has no tackles and no sacks after pulling a hammy during his pre-game psych-up, coo-coo dance. The guy he murdered is still dead however, so it is only fair.

Arizona v. Green Bay? Who cares? I’m tempted to go with Green Bay because Brett Favre doesn’t play there anymore, but I’ll go with Arizona by 7 because they’ve got Beanie Wells, and Kurt Warner used to have that awesome mullet.

The Browns will be the prohibitive favorites to win the Super Bowl after the 2012 season, but apparently the world ends on December 21, 2012, before the playoffs begin. Just my luck.

Movies: I haven’t seen it yet, but everyone (AY, Buzzard, Hankster) loves “Crazy Heart” for great acting and great music. I can’t wait to see that one. AY sees every movie. She recommends “Avatar,” as do I, but you have to see the 3-D version as it is “total eye candy” with a very simple story (read David Brooks’ sorta-review last week). AY, my wife, 2,543,768 other women and I liked “It’s Complicated.” It is kind of a chick-flick, but Baldwin, Streep and Steve Martin are all great, Santa Barbra is beautiful, and it has a good script. AY, Buzzard and I all give “Sherlock Holmes” a limp thumbs up. It was more action flick than I was expecting, but Guy Ritchie’s vision of 19th century London looks so cool it’s worth seeing for that alone; plus Robert Downey, and Jude Law as Watson, are great together. I’d have liked it 50% more if they’d left 30 minutes on the cutting room floor. Buzzard liked another movie, the name of which I forgot, and AY says “Nine” is “just plain awful.”

I’m off for a road trip to Florida on Tuesday. I’ll be taking my time, hoping to see a little of America off the Interste. TTY later.

Duplicity

I hope everyone had a chance to see Charlie Rangel express his outrage over the A.I.G. bonuses last week. What a performance by Cadillac Charlie. If you didn’t know better you’d never know that he solicited millions from the insurance giant and its former CEO, all the while inserting provisions in bills that saved the corporation many times that amount. If it seems I’m picking on him, believe me I realize that’s what Congressmen who gain the sort of power he has do, but he’s close to home and the Times does a good job of outing him – not that anyone seems to care. Read the latest here.

Another act of Congressional duplicity that ranks at the top of the list of double dealing the public was the provision inserted in the bill that created prescription drug benefits for older Americans which prohibited Medicare from using the buying power of the 40 million Americans who use Medicare to get competitive pricing. It’s been three years and now we know the cost of that provision, drafted by drug lobbyists and passed by our Congress: $30 billion over 10 years. There’s a good update in a column about it here.

I know many of you don’t want President Obama to take on Congress, but how else do we stop grand larceny on this scale?

A third, less damaging form of duplicity, is the new movie of the same name. It’s a fast paced, stylish, old-fashion caper movie with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts, and they are both great. Owen may be the coolest guy (other than Clint) in the movies today. One warning however: if you are easily confused by complicated plot twists, this may not be the movie for you. This one has more switchbacks than an Afghan mountain road.

Larry Summers

No, that’s not Larry to the left. That’s a shot of Mickey Rouke in The Wrestler. The guy may be odder than a three-legged duck, but he can act. I recommend the movie, but I did have to look away from the screen a couple times (but not while Marissa Tome was up there). I can’t believe neither Clint Eastwood nor Gran Torino were nominated for any Academy Awards.

Larry Summers was on Meet the Press yesterday, and if he is going to be the administration’s chief salesman for the recovery plan, it’s in big trouble. He was inarticulate, unenthusiastic and unpersuasive. Meanwhile the whole plan is starting to sound like one big “earmark” bill to me; every tin-pot Congressman seems to be getting some chunk of real money for his or her pet local project. If they want to sell this plan they should consider the much-maligned, but very-effective-when-done-right PowerPoint presentation. Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award based on his PowerPoint. They can communicate a lot of information in a few pages and can be emailed to millions in a heartbeat. I’d rather take my chances that way than count on Katie Couric getting it right.

Do you think the reason Joe Biden has that permanent goofball grin smeared across his face is to show off his ten grand in dental whitenicity?

Doesn’t anyone pay the payroll taxes for their household help? Was this also one of Caroline Kennedy’s sins? The Gov would have us think so. Things are heating up among the Patterson/Clinton/Kennedy clans. Both New York and Massachusetts have mobilized their National Guards. There have been reports of skirmishes in the disputed West Berkshire borders region. Stay tuned.

I saw my man Steve Earle at the Tarrytown Music Hall Friday night. I wish he’d had his band with him, but it was a thrill to hear him anyway. The dude can do a lot with voice, guitar and harmonica.

Can someone explain this?

Here were the headlines on http://www.cnnmoney.com/ at the end of the day on Friday:

* Most jobs lost in 34 years. 11 month decline of 1.9 million

* Unemployment rate soars to 6.7%

* Foreclosures soar 76% to record 1.35 million

* Dow rises 269.13

If this were an SAT test I think I could nail the line that doesn’t belong here. I will never understand the financial markets; but then again, the professionals don’t seem to either.

Charlie Rangel is back in the news. Seems he applied for and received a “homestead” tax rebate from NY state for a house he owns, but to legally qualify the house must be one’s principal residence. But Charlie lives in three rent controlled apartments in Harlem, also in conflict with the law. Then there is he failure to pay taxes on his condo in the Dominican. It’s good to be the king. It’s been a tough year for NY Dems. In addition to Charlie’s and Governor Spitzer’s little problems, new Governor Patterson had to fire his number one aide who had failed to pay US income taxes for several years. His lawyer claimed a form of mental illness that prevents a person from paying taxes. I wish it was contagious.

Two more reasons I love magazines: Read Esquire’s article in the December issue on Dean Kamen. Inventing the Segway may be among the least impressive (and least strange) of his many accomplishments. Turning sewage into drinking water? A perpetual motion machine? No problem for Dean. No blog is ever going to provide the world with this kind of journalism.

Is there any doubt that Clint Eastwood is the coolest guy on earth? Read this mini review in Time of his acting and directing career combined with more info on the upcoming Gran Torino, which he says will be his last acting job. His timing is also impeccable as it turns out he plays a recently retired Ford assembly line worker. Pretty topical.

Killery

Both Bob Schieffer and Tim Russert hosted Obama love fests this morning (I’m beginning to think the SNL parody was underplayed) and spent a lot of time bashing Hillary for her comment this week mentioning that Bobby Kennedy was murdered in June. If you saw the whole clip (CBS showed it – NBC did not) she was making the point that lots of primaries have dragged on longer than this one, but this was too juicy for the chattering class to leave without assigning to it a subliminal meaning.

However, the subliminal meaning they hope we will glean is so venal they can’t actually say it without contributing to its efficacy, but it’s there. They want people to believe that Senator Clinton was trying to plant the idea in someone’s head that it isn’t too late to kill Senator Obama – such is the depravity and all-consuming nature of her personal ambition. When I started this blog the very last thing I thought I’d spend time doing was defending Hillary Clinton, but I am just amazed at the unified and unrelentingly hostile nature of the media and political establishments aligned against her. She’s won the majority of the popular vote, she has a reasonable (if non-PC) rationale for why she’ll be the stronger candidate in the fall, and she’s played a key role in bringing out more registered Democrats than have ever been seen before. I don’t even like her but I just don’t understand the forces at work here.

Great movie: On a happier note, do yourself a favor and rent Across the Universe. I wish I’d seen it on a big screen with a great sound system (The Zeigfield Theater comes to mind) but it was great on DVD too. It’s a musical set to Beatles music, set mostly in New York with side trips to Liverpool, Princeton, Washington, Viet Nam and Ohio (really). The time is 1967-68 and the story is the story of the times – sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, politics, assassinations, war, protests and love. T-Bone Burnett adapted the music and even if you were on the other side of the Stones v. Beatles argument, as I was, nothing evokes the times like the boys from Liverpool. The movie uses innovative cinematography mixed with animation to create a mixture of the real and surreal. The choreography was fantastic and there are some great performances in small parts by the likes of Bono, Joe Cocker, and my favorite, Eddie Izzard. Don’t miss this one.