I don't actually hate Little Earthquakes

Tori Amos is a crazy person! Is there a more egregious example of a 60+ year old woman co-opting internet porn slang to put a little zip in her career?

I was sitting in my mansion, drinking tea, and surfing the net in a feverish search for ways to remain relevant to college girls. And then I saw this word MILF. What a revelation! I looked up the definition on Yahoo Answers and thought for a while about how I was the youngest person ever to attend Peabody. That's when I said to myself: Tori, you've still got it!

December Hash

Check out:

• Straight Bangin' on the wackiness of The View
• N'Gai Croal on criticism, the games industry, Goddard, and contempt for nerds
• Rolling Stone's bi-annual 'War on Drugs is failing' story. It's an evergreen!
• Hillary 'Leave Those Crackheads In Jail' Clinton loses the lead in Iowa to Obama. I unapologetically want to see her campaign go down in flames at this point. If I wanted a hawkish, status-quo hugging, mandatory minimums endorsing douchebag as commander in chief, I'd be voting Giulianni. Get this bullshit out of my house, Boomers.
• On the Chicago front: Bulls are 5-11. Have things changed in the blink of an eye?

Me? I'm good, if a little uncommunicative. I'm listening to a lot of Junior Senior, which might make me gay or Danish but (I promise) not both. If you happen to torrent the album on my 'recommendation', don't try to listen to it all at once -- it's a double.
Other than that, there's my deplorable underemployment (my BA taught me to add the '-der') which brings shame to my name but a funky focus to my brain. And a tendency to rhyme! Am I making a black joke here? No, I am not.

More, and sooner.

KKS

Sullivan, Screwdrivers, and Snipers

• Andrew Sullivan on Obama. It has to be the third sign of the apocalypse when I think anything Sullivan wrote is even-handed or non-hysterical. Now's as good a time as any to mention that I live in Chicago, so I'm probably just biased. And full of polish. And raping some guy with a screwdriver. My town, Chicago!
• Clive Owen has a Wired article about asymmetrical warfare and Halo 3. When I'm online, it's more like assymmetrical warfare, am I right?!!?
• Sorry! Much better updates tomorrow!

Welcome to SEASON FOUR

Morning!

I was set to write some kind of mission statement first, but I can save definitions for later. First, let me point you to the Grey's Anatomy blog. I know we're not friends yet, so you might well be wondering if I'm perpetrating on you. Maybe! Maybe!

Since I may not have built up enough cred with you to force you to search through that link, I'll just quote a little from Shonda Rhimes, creator and writer of the show. This is from her blog:

"So…change.

Change is good. Change is everything.

Change is also what’s in the stomach of that guy who can’t stop eating weird crap.

Welcome to Season Four. SEASON FOUR. I can’t believe we made it this far. We’re proud to have made it this far. Let me tell you, Season Three was not easy for anybody and we’re glad to have it behind us. It’s all new dawn, new day over here and people are happy as freaking pie about it."

Unbelievable, right? She also says 'new dawn, new day' 6 more times in that same post. If you've never seen the show, let me summarize its traits:

• It features women who are beautiful but 'real' looking. Think: '40ish but beautiful', 'Asian but taller', 'A little fat', and 'Looks just like my best friend'
  
• These women work (and love!) in a hospital.
• In every episode there are no less than 14 epiphanies, all with wispy female pop singer/songwriter backing tunes and blog-like monologues. Think: 'Change. Change is good, change is everything'.
• There are voice overs that also feature these same style of monologues when no one could stuff any more words into the characters' mouths. Imagine a MASH episode where, for no reason whatsoever, a random character was suddenly given a voice over to repeat the premise of the show ('The insanity of it all! Sometimes the only way to get by it is to be a little irreverent'). Then the music swells, then a commercial break.
  

Anyway, I note this stuff so as to say hey, that dog looks like its owner! Shonda Rhimes writes just like Grey's Anatomy sounds, which busts my previous theory that the show is like some kind of raw, atomic element which could only be obtained by distilling a narrative down to its most concentrated form. Like if you put Gilmore Girls in a vat and poured acid all over it. Call it Polonium Sux. Put some in your sushi.

Is this the beginning of some awful revolution that we've yet to fully recognize? In the media it's all 'Manhunt 2' and 'Iran', but this might be bigger. I feel like it's 1979 and someone at a block party in Brooklyn is saying 'hey, what if we cut out all the parts of disco except for the break?'.

Shonda Rhimes is the DJ Kool Herc of our time. You heard it here first. And I hear she has beef with Nora Ephron, who needs bodyguards now.

Next Post: I make moer sense!

k.k.s.