Saskatoon is in the room

Wherein Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago



In a Tuesday Morning Quarterback, filled with more than the usual amount of whiny moralization and finger-wagging, Gregg Easterbrook complains:

Sequel in Development: Mothra vs. Cloverfield: New York City gets destroyed in "Cloverfield," the silly-sounding monster movie that opens Friday. New York was destroyed in "Independence Day," in "Escape from New York," in "I Am Legend," in "The Day After Tomorrow," in "Planet of the Apes," in "A.I.," in "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," in the 1998 "Godzilla" remake, in all three King Kong movies, in the Tom Cruise movie version of "War of the Worlds," in the radio version of "War of the Worlds" and now in the Godzilla-esque "Cloverfield." How about a disaster movie that destroys Wichita or Saskatoon?

Other than the fact that New York is used for its iconic value because no one knows (or cares) what the heck fuck Wichita and Saskatoon looks like...how about it? I think the redundantly lettered flag football coach takes a few liberties with his movie facts.

• Independence Day. No direct indication that aliens destroyed Wichita and Saskatoon, but millions world-wide were murdered. McConnell Air Force Base is in Wichita, so quite likely received reprisals after the first failed attack on the alien ships. I'll say 50% chance Wichita was severely damaged, if not outright destroyed. -1 for Easterbrook. And another -1 for ignoring the destruction of Los Angeles.
  
• Escape from New York. I won't even let my kindergartener daughter get away this sort of misrepresentation. New York wasn't destroyed, it was walled off and turned into a prison. It's a functioning city suffering from neglect of upkeep. Maybe in the Canadian remake it'll be "Escape from Saskatoon"; until then: does not apply. -2 for Easterbrook.
  
• I Am Legend. Some sort of virus kills off most of the humans, leaving a few survivors and some zombie mutants. Again, New York is not destroyed, it is just shown in a state of extreme neglect because that's what would happen if everyone died. Since this was a global pandemic, we can assume that Wichita and Saskatoon suffered the same fate. -2 for Easterbrook
  
• The Day After Tomorrow. Buried with snow, not destroyed. Couple of snowblowers and some rock salt everything is good as new. Anyway, if New York was destroyed by a superstorm ice age, I don't think there's much hope for Saskatoon. No one is wasting a helicopter trip looking for survivors there. According to the wiki description, "Survivors are forced to flee to the Southern and Southwestern United States and Mexico." Kansas is not in the South on or Southwest. Reading Geology of the Kansas City Vicinity: "The modern landscape of the region was shaped largely during the Pleistocene Epoch (Ice Age) when continental ice sheets advanced into northeastern Kansas and northern Missouri." Maybe not completely buried by a giant mountain of snow, but tens of thousands dead sounds likely. -2 for Easterbrook
  
• Planet of the Apes. Once again, this movie does not destroy New York. What we see is 2,000 years in the future, after a nuclear war and talking monkeys flinging their talking monkey feces everywhere. Even without a nuclear war, two millenium would do a decent job of destroying everything. -2 for Easterbrook
  
• A.I.. Haven't seen it, so relying on wiki: "Global warming has led to an ecological disaster resulting in a drastic reduction of the human population and rising sea levels. Cities like New York City and Venice lie in ruins. Mankind’s efforts to maintain civilization lead to the creation of android artificial intelligence." Do we see it destroyed or just the aftermath that wiped out many other cities around the globe? I'll call this one a push.
  
• Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I saw this and I don't recall New York being destroyed. There's a robot attack and substantial damage. No points either way.
  
• 1998 Godzilla and all the King Kongs. Lots of damage, no destroyed city, and no evidence that maybe more than a couple hundred people were killed. In fact, I think just a cursory glance at the movies will show that the military did more damage than the monsters. No one is filming King Kong in Wichita or Saskatoon because there aren't any buildings to climb. -8 for Easterbrook
  
• War of the World. New York and half the world. Whatever, here's two points, don't spend them all in one place.

For accuracy, Gregg Easterbrook scores a -16. Not too good. Stick to whining about football. Speaking of which, here's Gregg performing a Vulcan mind-meld on Tony Romo and judging his soul to be as black as coal (emphasis added):

Jersey/A seemed to sense that Romo was not properly prepared for the game and would wilt under pressure, which is what happened. Romo kept trying to throw deep, rather than throwing slants, which are the standard counter to the big blitz. You sensed Romo wanted to hit a deep pass so everyone would credit him for winning the game.

Oh what a selfish bastard he was. And then this:

At the end, it was the second consecutive season the Cowboys lost in the playoffs after their glam-boy quarterback spent late December and early January boasting to the media and mingling with celebrities instead of focusing on football.

I know nothing about media boasts but in the one vacation photo I saw it looked like Tony Romo was ignoring the bikini'd babes and was intently reading a large notebook folder that I seemed to sense was related to football. I have a lifelong hatred of the Dallas Cowboys (don't ask me why, I don't know why, I just do), so if you end up making me defend them you've massively screwed up several things.

For the record

Wherein this counts as "lame" for quality of blog content


Thingthrowers are discussing the only football game I'll purposely watch, this year. My only comment on the game:

I don't much care for football and even I am looking forward to this game.

Mostly due to Gregg Easterbrook's increasingly annoying hatred of both the Patriots and satellite tv, I hope the Patriots win by 70 and a DirectTV executive kicks Easterbrook in the balls.

Satellite tv deserves a defense, but time is short. I still have that Gingrich thing hanging over my head. For now I can just tell you that we love the DISH, love the service we get from independent contractors, that we lose DISH service less often than we ever did with cable, and if we couldn't get satellite TV I'd go without television before I ever again deal with any of the assholes for any cable company.

Why is that, NFL?

Wherein do the dogcatcher


Gregg Easterbrook wrote:

There's something deeply sick about the fact that you can go to the NFL's official shop and order a Bills jersey with No. 32 and SIMPSON on the back -- go here and try it yourself -- or a Panthers jersey with CARRUTH on the back, the NFL system actually says "Great choice!" in response, but if you go here and try to order a Falcons' jersey with Vick's name or number, you'll get a message saying your order cannot be processed.

He's right:


The NFL also doesn't mind if you buy this jersey:

TMQ absurdity

Wherein going out of his way to complain about the least annoying aspect


If only Easterbrook understood the magical properties of copy and paste, this entire paragraph could have been avoided:

Another Reason Old Media in Decline: Tuesday Morning Quarterback was a lifelong subscriber to Columbia Journalism Review until, a few years ago, the phone rang at 8 p.m. during a family Sunday dinner, and it was a CJR telemarketer calling to ask if I wanted to extend my subscription. Instead, I said with full righteous mettle, "Cancel my subscription!" Recently, e-mails from the magazine have been showing up in my mailbox. Most e-mail services offer a one-click unsubscribe option. Not Columbia Journalism Review, whose e-mails say, "To unsubscribe send a blank e-mail to leave-cjr-o-79934E@lists.jrn.columbia.edu." The absurd length of the e-mail address is to discourage you from typing it out, or if you do, to make an error likely. This is an Internet variant of what TMQ calls the Voice Prompt Blockade -- those voice mail prompts which are designed to be impossible to get through.

Though he probably thinks this movie proves his supercollider and black hole fears

Wherein I'm he's wrong about everything


In an earlier thingy I addressed the issue of the redundantly lettered Gregg Easterbrook inaccurately bitching and moaning about New York City always being a target of movie destruction. Now for another contrapositive example, I'm watching the science documentary The Core where they litter London with dead birds and blow the crap out of Rome, Itlee. That's another -20 points for Ggrreeggg Eeaasstteerrbbttooookk.

I'm not sure why, but it looks like the entire movie is streamable at google video...for now. Skip ahead to the 46 minute mark.

U.N. stands for "useless ninnies"

Gregg Easterbrook:

Last week in New York, some 150 heads of state gathered for a summit to encourage the nations of the West to donate more aid to the impoverished of the developing world. Western nations should, in fact, increase the aid they give. Relatively small amounts by Western standards go a long way toward reducing human suffering in the world. And though corruption is an obvious problem, Western aid has accomplished far more for average people in developing nations than is generally understood. The details of that argument are here. The short version is that the reason the predicted Malthusian catastrophes have not struck developing nations is that aid helped prevent them. More, United States spending on foreign aid is much lower than popularly imaged -- only about one half of one percent of the federal budget is used for this purpose. We ought to give more.

But yours truly read in the New York Times that the influx of foreign leaders for the conference had flooded Manhattan's luxury hotels. The Four Seasons, where a deluxe suite costs $2,950 nightly plus tax, and the cheapest room is $625, was fully booked with foreign officials coming to New York to hector the United States for not giving more to other nations. At the Waldorf Towers, where a "grand" suite with dining room and boudoir costs $3,000 nightly, all 26 suites were booked by foreign delegations. Set aside were many of the super-expensive rooms were being occupied by government officials of the very nations needing aid -- that is, by leaders who are busily robbing their own people while asking America to pony up. I simply wonder how many millions of dollars were spent on luxury suites, first class travel and four-star meals for 150 heads of state and their staffs to come together and wring their hands about why doesn't someone else do more about poverty! Instead of spending that money on themselves, the officials who attended last week's United Nations meeting could have stayed home and given the money to the poor.