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November 09, 2004

Madonna Calls For US Withdrawal From Iraq, Then Pantomimes Masturbation With a Fungo Bat

It's kinda sad when you make a movie like Swept Away, containing what's supposed to be a big sexy scene about semi-forced sodomy, and you still can't induce perverts like myself to watch past the first three minutes.

Madonna's the sort of liberal twit who's always asking "Why do they hate us?"

You know why they hate us, Madge? Body of Evidence for starters. Dick Tracy for another one.

Sometimes I'll accidentally watch The Next Best Thing and I'll start thinking about strapping dynamite to my chest.

Thank the Lord that Osama bin Ladin's never seen Shanghai Surprise. You think he's angry now? He could be angrier still, trust me. The loss of Andalusia to the Infidels is nothing compared to watching Madonna try her hand at screwball-cute banter for ninety teeth-grinding minutes.

Update: That insipid cover of American Pie probably didn't win us any friends, either.

posted by Ace at 02:36 PM

Comments

Madonna's the sort of liberal twit who's always asking "Why do they hate us?"

Well, in her case it's probably the annoying fake British accent.

Posted by: zetetic on November 9, 2004 02:47 PM

There is that.

It's not even really a fake British accent. It's -- I don't know what the hell it is.

It's some sort of English-inflected secret language she's created, like the kind twins teach each other.

Posted by: ace on November 9, 2004 02:48 PM

I did like Desperatly Seeking Susan (the only Madonna movie that's watchable). But in that one, she was just playing Madonna circa 1985.

It's been downhill for her ever since.

Posted by: Scout on November 9, 2004 02:54 PM

"Global terror is everywhere. Global terror is down the street, around the block," she said.

"Global terror is in California. There's global terror everywhere...."

Gosh, kind of puts the lie, then, to the notion that only residents of New York City have the right to decide which president will make folks safer from terrorists.

Posted by: Sam on November 9, 2004 02:56 PM

The remake is going to be called "Desperately Seeking Susan (Sarandon)"

Posted by: Senator PhilABuster on November 9, 2004 03:04 PM

Ace--

Do you even *have* a real job???

I started typing this up the second I saw the story, and you still beat me to the scoop.

That, AND a Shanghai Surprise reference.

Oh well. Here's my now-obsolete two cents: http://garfieldridge.blogspot.com/2004/11/madonna-calls-for-us-troops-to-leave.html

I'm beginning to think we should start a blogosphere division of labor-- you take all the hot "Where are they now?" starlets of the 1980's, and perhaps I can take over-the-hill musical acts taking potshots at American policy.

Hell, I'll settle just for everything related to nuclear weapons, military space capabilities, and John McEnroe's talk show.

However we do it, we really have to think of some more efficient organization if this right-wing hive mind thing is gonna have staying power past Rathergate.

Cheers,
Dave

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on November 9, 2004 03:18 PM

OK, this is great example of the proper time to use the word "cunt".

Posted by: Master of None on November 9, 2004 03:28 PM

Celebrities. Is there anything they don't know?

Posted by: Bald Eagle on November 9, 2004 03:30 PM

Global terror is in California? WTF? News to me! Fat Kid, you heard anything about this?

Perhaps Madonna mystical Kabbalistic powers have revealed a terrorist plot afoot in the Bear Flag Republic. Is this what Streisand referred to as the reign of witches?

Posted by: See-Dubya on November 9, 2004 04:00 PM

The original version of "Swept Away" was hot. I figgered this new version would, with today's loosened morals in film, be even better.

Sadly, I was mistaken.

Posted by: Steve L. on November 9, 2004 04:56 PM

That Minnie Driver-esque phony accent is another indication that celebs have invented some fantasy world for themselves.

A world where they are some kind of aristocracy. Where people give a shit what they say off the screen. A world where actors are smart.
Instead of the empty, unfaithful, ignorant, narcissistic, hypocritical perverts they actually are.

Posted by: lauraw on November 9, 2004 05:19 PM

Ditto what lauraw said!

Posted by: Scout on November 9, 2004 07:09 PM

"Who cares what Madonna thinks?" you asked.
And then I clicked the link, and I read what Madonna thinks.
Why, why, why. Why did I sacrifice those fine brain cells for that.

Posted by: m on November 9, 2004 07:32 PM

"It's some sort of English-inflected secret language she's created, like the kind twins teach each other."

Best. Putdown. Ever.

Posted by: Andrea Harris on November 9, 2004 08:32 PM

I would hazzard a guess that this is the very first time Madonna has ever asked anyone to "withdraw".

Posted by: Shawn on November 9, 2004 11:10 PM

I would hazzard a guess that this is the very first time Madonna has ever asked anyone to "withdraw".

I'll bet she's been asked to withdraw more than a few times.

After all... Madonna. Strap-on. Sean Penn.

Posted by: scott on November 10, 2004 09:55 AM

"I would hazzard a guess that this is the very first time Madonna has ever asked anyone to 'withdraw'."

Shawn, you filthy animal.
hee hee

Posted by: lauraw on November 10, 2004 11:10 AM

I never could see why people thought from the beginnig, t.hat 1cent media whore is so shocking!I remember seeing her on the1st MTV
Video Awards writhing on the floor in that silly see-thru dress OOOO-AHHHH. Yeah she was okay but gawd that stoopid music!That L.A.V song, big fucking deal! Ever hear Maryanne Faithful's Why'd you Spit On My Snatch? Inovator my ass! IMITATOR IS MORE LIKE IT! People just need to turn of EmPTYVEE and popular media and really explore what's going on in music.

Posted by: on June 18, 2005 01:51 AM

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What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
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A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

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