Morgan (2016)

Finally, it's summer!  And it's about 67 degrees as the wind and rain come bearing down on my house.  Whee, glad it's finally...  here?  You got to love the summer solstice, and the way the news people report the beginning of the season.  My one calendar says the summer solstice was on Tuesday, but the news on one channel reported the first full day of summer on Wednesday, and another channel reported Thursday as the first day of summer.  I don't know, maybe we could all get together and agree on the date at some point, instead of throwing darts at a calendar while blindfolded?  Just an idea.  Throwing darts IS more fun, I guess.

Seems like every film is billed as the best film to come out in forever and a day, and then, 2 minutes after it hits theaters, you never hear about it again.  That's how you know you got a bad film.  If you keep hearing good things about a movie, even after it's been released, then go see the damn thing, because you know it's decent.  Take Wonder Woman.  I haven't seen it yet, but it's doing good at the box office, and everyone is saying good things about it.  I haven't seen it yet, but if it is that good, then DC might finally have a winner on their hands, instead of playing poor cousin to Marvel.

Morgan (2016) was one of those films you hear a lot about at first, then it drops off the radar.  Kate Mara stars as a Risk-Assessment Investigator or some shit, basically a troubleshooter sent in to find out wtf happened at a remote research facility.  If you've ever seen a horror movie in your life, you know remote research facilities are always bad places to end up.  Strange and creepy shit happens in these places all the time.  In this particular case, the research is an artificially-made being, and I'm not giving anything away by telling you that, because that was the whole point of all the teaser trailers and movie promos.  "Morgan" is the name of the artificial being.

I'm not going to say anymore about the film so I don't give anything away, except to mention that Toby Jones, Paul Giamatti and Michelle Yeoh all pop up in various supporting roles.  I like Paul Giamatti in everything he does, and Kate Mara played this part pretty well.  Sadly, I figured out the "twist" ending about 5 minutes into the film, and that's not an exaggeration.  Kate Mara pulls up to the research facility in a car at the beginning of the movie, is welcomed into the place, and I began to suspect the "twist ending" by the time she had set her bag down on the bed int he guest room.  It kinda sucks that I saw it coming that far away, but I guess it was on purpose.  It doesn't take anything away from the enjoyment of the film, really.

I will say this much, that everyone seemed to rave about the performance of the young girl who played Morgan, and I guess she did fine, but I don't think the movie should have focused so much on Morgan's, ah, interest in nature, I guess you'd call it?  Morgan is all going on about some natural wonder at some point, maybe waxing philosophical, I don't know.  I think my eyes glazed over and I fell asleep, because a horror movie shouldn't be waxing philosophical in the middle of the damn action.  Just a personal opinion, because it seemed to ruin the flow of the film, and detracted from the overall enjoyment.

Would I watch Morgan again?  No, but it wasn't horrible the first time.  As I said, having figured out the supposed plot twist in the first few moments, I was even more interested in seeing what happened next, so it wasn't entirely bad that I figured it out.  No nudity, a fair bit of action, not a whole lot of suspense or surprises, but hey, Paul Giamatti!  I think I caught Morgan on one of the premium channels.  Cinemax, maybe?  Can't recall.

House of Cards (Netflix) just ran it's 5th season.  I finished watching it last week, but I can't really say I enjoyed it.  It was one thing when Frank was going around killing co-eds (like Kate Mara) in the second season or whatever, but now that's he got to be president, it's all hushed whispers and intrigue and blah de blah blah.  Politics as usual, I guess.  I like action, goddammit, and House of Cards has been having less and less of it lately.

Look, I may catch hell for having this opinion, but I'm going to put it out there, because that's what this review is.  My opinion.  I am all for Women's lib, and I think women (and men) in Hollywood should get paid their worth in relation to the movie.  We all know the big stars get paid more than the little ones, and the lead roles get more moolah than the extras.  This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, and nobody expects some yokel they hired to play a mud wrestler in a ten-second bar scene to get paid as much as Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse (for example), so I'm just going to come right out and say it.  Robin Wright is no Kevin Spacey.

Look I'm not saying she's a bad actress, and I'm not saying she isn't integral to the series.  But I watch House of Cards to see Kevin Spacey be the evil little gremlin who will kill to stay in power, and seeing him hand over his chair to his wife, well, it just didn't seem to be in character.  Another thing, I could stand Kevin Spacey talking to the camera every so often because I figured he was kind of a narrator.  Normally I hate it when actors break the 4th wall (Deadpool included), but if it's a narrator who happens to be part of the story, it's barely tolerable.  Then Mrs. Underwood is just walking past the camera and starts talking to it this past season, and now I've got two people breaking the 4th wall.  At this point, you're not talking about a narrator, you're talking about a fake documentary, and I hate real documentaries, let alone fake ones.

Suffice it to say, the profound lack of action, the narrative breaking mold, the characters switching roles, I don't know.  I just don't think I'll be watching House of Cards anymore.  Course, the next season probably won't be out til 2019, and I could be dead by then, so who knows.  (shrug)

I managed to barely catch the series premiere of The Mist (SpikeTV) the other night.  I literally happened to turn on my TV and that channel was on and I saw it coming up next.  I was like WHEW! because I literally had no idea there was a Mist series coming out until I saw it coming up on TV.  As it turns out, the series looks decent, but I hope at some point that they explain where the Mist came from.  Neither the novel by Stephen King, nor the movie a few years back, went into detail about that.  Maybe the series will give a brief rundown from a surviving soldier, I don't know.  It's just got me really curious to figure out where the bloody hell this mist came from.  I can only imagine (from the sudden appearance of a military guy) that some army research base accidentally opened a portal to another world, but there's no real indication of anything about that except for all the atmosphere and strange wildlife that seems to be flowing out from somewhere.  I hope the series isn't just another damn "scared people trapped in a store" bullshit like the movie.  I want to know about the monsters, dammit!  If I wanted to see scared people trapped in a store, I'd go visit Wal-Mart after midnight.

That's all I got for tonight, people!  If I don't see any good movies before the 4th of July, enjoy Independence Day, and the beginning of summer.  I will probably be back in July to post again, as soon as I find some good movies to watch.  Until then, enjoy the beers and BBQ!

Series Roundup June 2017

I haven't done a series roundup in a couple months now, so let's take a quick look at what I've been watching, shall we?

Brockmire (IFC) ended it's first season last month, I think, after maybe 8 half-hour episodes.  When I saw the first episode, I honestly though it was going to be a heartwarming, yet funny story about an ex-broadcaster who finds redemption (and a job) by calling out the plays for a minor league baseball team.  At first, I thought it was a touching idea. A former big-league announcer spends his twilight years becoming a fixture of a small hometown, and ends up recapturing a bit of his lost dignity while the home team recaptures some of it's former glory.  The owner-bartender manages to save the town, which is being slowly destroyed by loss and a greedy oil company.  I don't really like watching sports on TV, mind you, but everyone likes rooting for the underdog, and that's what I thought Brockmire was going to be about.

Brockmire was none of that.  Hank Azaria plays Brockmire, the loud-mouthed, drunken announcer.  Amanda Peet plays the bartender, who's trying to save her town from a greedy oil company.  After that first couple episodes, which showed such promise, Brockmire devolved into a train wreck caused by the main character's own ego.  I think maybe that was the point, but it wasn't really a good end for the first season.  I was starting to root for Brockmire, but then everything went downhill.  I mean, who could abandon Amanda Peet?  Not I!  Just didn't seem right.  And who's going to save the town?  Maybe we'll find out next season, if there is one.

I've had a hankering for murder mysteries lately, and Netflix had a bunch to offer.  First one I discovered was Death in Paradise, a typical fish-out-of-water tale about a London detective sent to a tiny tropical island in the caribbean, to serve as the head of the Police force there.  As you may know, Britain was a naval superpower back in the day, and apparently this island was still under British rule.  I guess there's some law that states an Englishman has to be in charge of the police force, and that's why a replacement detective inspector was sent all the way from London to help sovle the death of the first detective, but that's all the intricacies of British law that I can follow.  In any case, Death in Paradise begins with the death of the first Detective Inspector stationed on Saint Marie.  Another detective inspector is sent to look into the death of the first one, and that's what kicks off the first season.  I think they've gone into 5 or 6 seasons, now.

Death in Paradise worked for me, at first.  The scenery of St. Marie was beautiful, and there were plenty of wide shots of the island beaches and jungles.  The London guy was a brilliant detective, but was totally out of his element in Saint Marie.  Leaning heavily on the local supporting police force, two officers and an attractive, female Detective Sargeant, the London guy manages to solve the case of the death of the previous inspector, and then gets shang-haied into staying on the island as the new Detective Inspector, another intricacy of British law.  Ben Miller played DI (Detective Inspector) Richard Poole, Sara Martins played the beautiful DS Camille Bordey, and I could see right off that she was enchanted with the new inspector.  I expected their romance to be a slow burn over a couple of seasons, and I was right, but just when I thought things were going to come to a head, DI Poole was killed off at the start of the second season.

Kris Marshall took over as the new DI, Humphrey Goodman, probably some cast kerfluffle that I was not privy to, and the series sort of took a nose-dive for me.  Kris Marshall's clumsy, oafish character portrayal seemed almost too similar to DI Poole, and they solved cases in almost an identical fashion.  The show became formulaic, and there was no sexual tension between anyone on the show anymore.  Cases began to focus on a huge buildup before the frenetic explanation of how the crime was committed right at the end of the hour-long show, and there was often little or no evidence presented by DI Goodman to support his fanciful explanation of events around the murder.  I watched supporting cast after supporting cast staring emotionless at DI Humphrey as he rattled off some ridiculous explanation of a crime that made no sense, and it was like the other actors didn't even care to act their parts, anymore.

Death in Paradise had become the DI Goodman Show, where the whole show began to revolve around Goodman's ability to make up some fanciful tale in the last 5 minutes of the show that somehow explained everything that had happened in the last hour, leading to the arrest of someone who often looked totally confused and perplexed by what had just happened to them.  I wonder if the writers had even informed the cast on who was going to be arrested beforehand, or just left it up to the individual actors to try and ad-lib the proper reactions to being arrested.  That would certainly explain the look of confused surprise I kept seeing on the actor's faces as they were led off in handcuffs.  Surely, if they'd actually committed the murder in the fashion that the DI had described, wouldn't there be a look of angry guilt over being caught, instead?  You'd think so, wouldn't you?  I know I did.

Over the course of DI Humphrey Goodman's Reign of Terror, inflicting random supporting characters with imprisonment at his merest whim, the show lost a good portion of the supporting regular cast members.  DS Camille Bordey was replaced by DS Florence Cassell (who, while beautiful, seems to offer no romantic options whatsoever), and one of the local officers was even replaced.  At this point, the only remaining members of the original cast are Officer Dwayne Myers (Danny John-Jules) and Commissioner Selwyn Patterson (Don Warrington) ont he police side, and Catherine Bordey (Elizabeth Bourgine), Camille's mom, who at first ran the local bar and was recently elected Mayor.

In any case, it wasn't long before Kris Marshall was tapped to become the next Dr. Who (from what I've heard), and so he's been written out of the show.  Sadly, he wasn't killed off like poor DI Poole, but his character ended up following his heart to some romantic interlude back in London.  By some amazing coincidence of events, I started watching this show on Netflix, and then just as I finished watching the latest season there, I noticed it was actually playing on my local Public Broadcasting Channel on TV.  That's where I saw DI Goodman heading off to his romantic interlude, caught up on the latest season, and saw that they'd replaced Di Goodman with another DI from London, this one an older man whose wife had just died.  Accompanied by his adult daughter, this mourning Widower is the new DI of St. Marie, so I suppose he'll start solving crimes next season, if there is one.  After losing so many cast members over the last half-dozen years, I would be surprised if the show was already off the rails, and ended up cancelled before it could become a total trainwreck.  Still, as far as formulaic hour-long whodunnits set in exotic locations go, it's hard to go wrong with Death in Paradise.  Maybe next season will get better.  Personally, I think they should bring back Camille (Sara Martins) as the next DI, but what do I know?

There's another series of murder mysteries called the Midsomer Murders (also on Netflix, also British-made).  These are actually closer to two-hour movie murder mysteries, but star the same recurring characters.  DCI (Detective Chief Inspector) Tom Barnaby begins the first season (which consisted of 5 hour-and-a-half-or-so movies), and Netflix just added season 19.  With the actual movies being made over the course of the last 20 years, from 1997 when the series began to 2017, there have obviously been a few cast changes.  Tom Barnaby is played by John Nettles where I am in the series at the moment, but as I can see from IMDB, he was somehow replaced in 2011 with Neil Dudgeon, and the series is still still going.  I am only up to season 7, I believe.  As each "episode" is an hour and a half to two-hour movie, and each "series" consists of 4-8 movies, that easily adds up to well over 100 movies!  :-o

So, if you're looking for an Agatha-Christie-Style whodunit, steeped in the idyllic small-English-town life of the (imaginary?) villages of Midsomer, look no further.  The acting and production values are exemplary enough for British television, and while the murders and plot twists are sometimes easy to figure out, there's enough variety to keep most people guessing.  At the rate I am watching these things (one movie every few days) I expect to be caught up to the latest series by the year 2020.  Yeesh.  I need to binge-watch this shit one of these days, but there's only so much dry British politeness I can handle at one sitting.

Saving Grace (also on Netflix, but not British this time) is another option.  An hour-long police drama series starring Holly Hunter, I first checked it out when it aired on TV about a decade ago.  Basically, it's a show about a police detective named Grace Hanadarko (Holly Hunter, and yes, Hanadarko is an odd name, I agree), who solves crimes in Texas, but is randomly visited by an angel (played by Leon Rippy).  Grace is essentially the poster child for functioning alcoholics, and ends up nymphomaniacally sleeping with any number of extras and male cast members along the way.  The angel (Earl, by name) is apparently Grace's "Last-Chance-Angel," meaning she's got to mend her life of drunken debauchery, or risk going to Hell.  Grace is stubbornly resistant to all of Earl's interference in her affairs, and I for one was almost turned away by the constant religious message underpinning the entire show.  Still, Leon Rippy made a great angel, and Holly Hunter did several nude scenes just in the first season, which kept me coming back, to see just how much nudity the show could get away with on TV.  I stopped watching after the first season, but Christina Ricci pops up in the second season as a temporary replacement for Grace's partner, who is doing undercover work.  I am hoping to catch the rest of the shows that I missed (just to see how much longer Holly Hunter can rock that older but in-shape naked body) before Netflix drops the show in early July.

Finally, I'm going to cap off this post with a quick review on Neil Gaiman's American Gods, on Starz (I think).  Ian "Tits-and-Dragons" McShane is Mr. Wednesday (Wotan or Odin), looking to recruit a bunch of old European gods to do battle with the new American Gods, presumably to try and recapture their glory days and get someone to worship them again.  I think there's only 8 episodes, and I've seen 7 of them, with the last episode of the first season to air next week.  Ricky Whittles plays Shadow Moon, an employee of Mr. Wednesday, and Emily Browning plays his undead ex-wife.  There's a medium-sized supporting cast, but this is no Game of Thrones.

Now, I'm not trying to say that the show is boring, but, the most exciting event in the last 7 episodes was a game of checkers.  And then, in the next episode...  they played checkers again.  I dunno.  I guess Neil Gaiman is some high mucky-muck or something, and everyone is supposedly all abuzz about this show, but watching guys play checkers just doesn't do much for me.  Emily Browning might have done a few nude scenes in the last couple episodes, OR that might have been just a body suit, because under all the undead make-up, it's hard to tell.  The series has felt really short, mainly because everything is all build-up leading up to the season finale, but if nothing exciting happens, I can only hope it'll be the end of the series.  There's only so much watching-people-play-checkers that I can stomach, before I turn to watch Friday the 13th part 2 for the 87th time, just to see some action.

That's all for tonight.  Same bat-time, same oh-you-know.

The Accountant (2016), Bye Adam West

Seems like we're losing a lot of celebrities so far this year, but trust me, it's nothing like 2016.  You'd hear about a celebrity death, and then before you could finish tweeting out your sympathies, there was another one on top of it.  While your mouth was still hanging open, someone else died.  Crazy shit last year.  But before I get to the obit, let me do the review.

The Accountant (2016) is a story about an accountant.  Yep, pretty much your basic, everyday, ordinary accountant, who launders money for drug cartels, third-world dictators and mafia families.  He also kills people on weekends, or any day ending in "Y."  Yep, it seems the accountant is also an assassin, but he doesn't do it for money.  Nope, this assassin has a moral code, and if you break his code, well, then, this accountant is going to balance your books, by any means necessary.

What, no?  You saw the "balance your books" comment coming, huh?  Yea, I can only make an accountant sound so exciting.  He's an accountant, fer chrissakes.  It's not like they do exciting work.  Or maybe they find it exciting, who knows.  It's alotta numbers.  My eyes glazed over after 2+2=yawn.

So, the Accountant stars Ben Affleck as Christian Wolff, the afore-mentioned "Accountant."  Anna Kendrick is Dana Cummings, another... uh...  accountant...  and J.K Simmons is a...  forensic....  ok, he's basically just another accountant.  There's an amazing supporting cast, though, with John Lithgow, and Jeffrey Tambor, who plays a very interesting...  ok, he's an accountant too.  Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick.  Okay, look.  There's a little bit of eye candy, at least.  Cynthia Addai-Robinson is an...  Analyst!  Hah!  You thought I was going to say Accountant, didn't you?  FOOLED YOU!  BWAHAHAHAHAAAAA!  Okay, yea, you're right.  Analyst still sounds pretty boring.

So Christian Wollf is basically a high-functioning Autistic kid with Aspergers Syndrome, or something, who grew up and became, you guessed it, an accountant.  I will say this much.  I think Ben Affleck has found his, uh, "acting strengths," or lack of a better phrase.  He should play abnormal guys who show absolutely no emotion from now on.  He totally nailed it!  At no point during this movie did I say to myself "That's Ben Affleck!  He's playing an emotionless dork!"  Well, maybe once or twice, I...  Okay, it was every minute.  You caught me.

I don't want to give anything away, but if you didn't already guess John Lithgow was the villain, you're an idiot.  John Lithgow has been playing psychotic villains since I was in my teens, and he's a master at his craft.  It wouldn't surprise me to find out John Lithgow actually is a psychotic villain.  Actually, that would explain a lot.  Hmmmm.

So, The Accountant was an action movie, with a lot of action in it.  Between accountants.  Yeah.  It wasn't bad, I guess.  The supporting cast was pretty good.  I love J.K. Simmons, and Anna Kendrick is...  uh.  Accountant...  ish...  and there's John Lithgow!  How can you go wrong here?  Well, I saw most of the "plot twists" coming a mile away, but I guess the movie wasn't going for surprises.  Just lots of action, and some fights, and hey, no explosions, but that's okay.  You don't expect explosions in a movie called "The Accountant," right?  Right!  Would I watch it again?  No.  Did I like it the first time?  Yeah, I guess.  Would I watch a sequel?  Maybe.  That's all I got.  The Accountant is on HBO, if you want to check it out for yourselves.  Moving on.

In other news, Adam "Batman" West died yesterday, at the ripe old age of 88.  Most of you younger folks probably know him from his voice acting on Family Guy (I think he played Mayor Adam West, in case you missed him there), but I never watched Family Guy, so I'll always remember him from Batman, the TV series.  And no, I don't mean Gotham.  I mean Batman, 1966 and 1967.  It may have gone on for more years, but not even I, as old as I am, was alive back then, so I have no idea.

I remember one episode of Batman, where Batman (Adam West), Robin and Batgirl were all captured by a bunch of costumed villains, like the Penguin and Catwoman and probably the Riddler.  So, of course the bad guys don't just kill the three of them, no, that would ruin the series.  No, they tie Batman, Robin and Batgirl into a "Human Pretzel" or a "three-way knot" or something that sounded obscene, but actually wasn't.  So, of course Batman has studied these things, and there is absolutely no way out of the human knot, and the more they struggle, the righter it gets, until all their bones crack and they die, EXCEPT...  in their inexperience tying humans into knots, the villains have done it incorrectly!  Batman can still wiggle his left earlobe!  :-o

Okay, let's just take this a piece at a time.  One, how DO you get experience tying humans into knots?  I mean, just how many people do you have to tie up before you get it just right?  Two, batman and Robin and Batgirl are all sitting there tied into a knot, talking to each other about the knot, and moving their jaws, and tongues, and mouths.  Three, how the shit do you wiggle your left earlobe, and how, by the sweet blood of Jesus, do you untie yourself that way?

Of course, a few seconds after Batman is supposedly wiggling his left earlobe, they all fall out of the "Human Knot," and go after the bad guys.  I never actually saw his earlobe move.  But seriously, it takes an actor of enormous talent not to freaking crack up laughing while trying to act that "human knot" scene.  I swear I saw smiles on Robin AND Batgirl, but Adam West was straight-faced the whole damn time.  That's skill, right there.  Consummate skill.  Okay, he may have been grinning too, I honestly can't remember, but come on!  Ridiculous!  So, Bye Adam West, you awesome, awesome actor, you!  You will be missed.

In other other news, Bill Maher said the "N-word" on his show, Real Time with Bill Maher, and everyone's shit hit the fan.  I guess he apologized, and some non-caucasian person (I don't know who, because I don't always watch Bill Maher) came on his show and said it was a "teachable moment" for Bill Maher.  I guess the guy said something about it feeling like a knife twisting inside of him when a white guy said the N-word, but not when a non-white person said it, and that black people were "taking back" the N-word.

Okay, I have a few problems with this, from a purely logical standpoint.  Now, I'm going to fess up and admit that I am white, but I am not racist, so that shouldn't matter, at least insofar as I am making my points out of pure logic, here.  I will also point out, before I begin, that I have never, and would never, use the N-word myself.  It's like using the C-word to describe a woman.  Yes, technically, they are just words, but it's a bit too crude for my taste.  I feel all slimy inside when I even think about them, just because of the negative connotations, and also because I am a bit of a wuss.

So, my points.  Okay, first, Bill Maher is an entertainer, and as far as I am aware, he's not racist, either.  He didn't call anyone else the N-word, but used it in reference to himself, calling himself a "House n---a."  Yes, definitely a joke in poor taste.  Yes, a socially embarrassing faux-pas.  But, he's a comedian.  This is what they do.  They dig deep for jokes, and some of those attempts at humor are shockingly brutal attempts at making you laugh.  So maybe some of them aren't as funny as others, and maybe some are even offensive.  They can't all be gems.  Remember Don Rickles, who also just died?  He made his living insulting people, and was widely loved.  Yes, he was also a comedian.

Point two.  Three words.  Freedom of Speech.  The First Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteed to every American Citizen by the oldest laws of our nation.  It's a basic right.  I don't recall who said it, because I am getting old, but the saying goes "I do not agree with a thing you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."  Telling Bill Maher he can't say the N-word is a form of censorship, and we shouldn't be agreeing with that.  Censorship kills the spread of ideas, even if those ideas aren't necessarily good ones, like the N-word.  I know freedom of speech gets a bad rap in this politically correct 21st-century world, but we shouldn't walk all over it, just because we can.

Point three, Bill Maher's "teachable moment."  Do you really think Bill Maher doesn't know it's wrong to use the N-word?  I'm pretty sure everyone knows that by now, even the people who still use it, which brings me to my next point.

Point four.  I saw Luke Cage, on Netflix.  I don't know who wrote the dialogue for that series, but they say the N-word every 3 and a half minutes or so (and no, I didn't time it).  Seriously, non-whites, if you want people to stop using the N-word, don't you think, I don't know, maybe you should stop using it so much, too?  Because at this point, non-whites are using it a hell of a lot more often than white folks, and keeping it in the common vocabulary.  But hey, what do I know?  I'm just making a suggestion.

Point five.  How do non-caucasians "take back the N-word," exactly?  By using it constantly, and getting mad when white folks say it?  By telling them that it's a "teachable moment" when a white person uses it, but saying that it doesn't hurt when non-white-folks say it?  So, it's totally okay for non-whites to say the N-word, but not whites?  Let me recap the logic of this position, to see if they've thought this one all the way through.  Non-whites are saying that, because of the color of their skin, they get special privileges?  Gee, doesn't that sound a bit, I don't know, racist?  Isn't that why non-whites were so mad at white people for so long, because of that very attitude?  Isn't that a bit hypocritical?

So, to sum up, yes, Bill Maher screwed up, and no, Bill Maher is not a racist prick (as far as I know) who needs to apologize for the rest of his life because he said a naughty word.  If there's any defensible logic to anyone saying that they have special privileges because of the color of their skin, then I'd like to hear it, because that shit just doesn't make a lick of sense, and it never has.

Some of you may be wondering why I even brought this up, because I don't like to get involved in current events, but this isn't politics, and it's not religion.  Bill Maher's an entertainer and a comedian, and I like to consider myself an entertainer and a comedian, on my better days, so I thought I'd open my big yap and speak up.  It was probably a mistake, but I'm not exactly known for my better judgement.  :-)

That's all for tonight.  Tune in next time, same bat-time, same bat-channel!