Fanny and Alexander it ain’t.

If you want to see a movie this weekend that will stimulate you intellectually and remind you of the pains and pleasures of childhood, don’t see Land of the Lost.  But, if you grew up in the 1970s and enjoyed the TV shows of Sid and Marty Krofft and want to re-experience their weirdness and wackiness of their imaginary worlds, then head on out to your local multiplex and catch this flick.  It is a lot of fun and is particularly enjoyable with a bucket of popcorn.

Perhaps, one of the greatest delights of the movie was how much it called back to the original, classic 1970s TV series,  They didn’t overdo the CGI effects.  Only the dinosaurs were CGI, the rest of the creatures were just those we saw in monster movies of the 1950s and ’60s and TV shows of the 1960s and ’70s, actors in rubber (or hairy) suits.  It added to the film’s campy nostalgia appeal.  Even the way the reptilian Sleestaks walked seemed reminiscent of old monster movies.  As I watched this movie last night, perhaps seeing a Sleestak on screen for the first time in three decades, I wondered if their strange shape, facial structure and green coloring inspired George Lucas to create the Rodian species, of whom Greedo (so ceremoniously dispatched by Han Solo in the cantina) is perhaps the most familiar representative.

In this re-imagined world of Sid and Marty, Dr. Rick Marshall (Will Ferrell), Holly Cantrell (Anna Friel) get sucked into a space-time vortex while trying out his tachyon beam emitter (or some such) with Will Stanton (Danny McBride) while that latter had been giving them a tour of his cheezy fake cave (basically a poor imitation of a Disneyland ride) in the middle of the desert.  Once, in this alternate universe, they face strange monkey men, befriending one of their number, Cha-ka (Jorma Taccone), get chased by a Tyrannosaurus Rex (with a brain larger than a walnut), face down the reptilian Sleestak and meet a strange alien in a clear pylon.

There are many references to the original series.  And like many contemporary movies, it’s basically just a series of sketches grouped around a common theme, here, a self-important temporal (or whatever) paleontologist’s adventures in a strange land with a compassionate female scientist (who has the hots for him) and a dumb redneck along for comic relief.  But, each scene is fun enough that you kind of forget the absence of plot.  In short, it’s the kind of movie we enjoyed as kids.

And if you suspend disbelief for long enough, even if you’ve grown up, you’ll enjoy this one too.  It reminds you of your childhood pleasures, particularly those of us who grew up experiencing the zany imagination of the Krofft brothers on our parents’ television screens.

With the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that unemployment has increased to its highest level since the final aftershocks of the 1970s, it has become clear to all but the most dyed-in-the-wool Obama partisans and their media echo chamber (was that a redundancy?) that the “stimulus” has failed to created the new jobs promised when this was passed.

Remember when candidate Barack Obama invoked Dr. Martin Luther King to remind us of the “fierce urgency of now“?  Well, once elected, that rhetoric (like much of his campaign) rhetoric has fallen by the wayside, replaced with policies designed to help the special interests who elected him and help the Democrats whose votes he needs to enact his statist agenda.

If  Democrats really believed their “stimulus” would spur economic growth, they would have front-loaded it, that is, directed that the money go out immediately when it could most invigorate an ailing economy (as per the rhetoric surrounding the urgency of passage before even most elected representatives (or anyone else for that matter) had a chance to read it).  Perhaps, defenders of the “stimulus” will claim that this budget boondoggle has failed to create any new jobs because only 5% of the money has been spent so far.

And the very failure to spend suggests that the purpose of this legislation was not to respond to immediate economic distress, but to the Democrats’ more pressing concern–retaining their majority–for “the bulk of the cash flow will not happen until mid-2010.”  Just in time to rev up the economy before the mid-term elections.

(Even though the money has not gone out, at the time of its passage, the President warned us that without its passage, unemployment would increase.  Well, it did pass and unemployment has increased to the levels we were told it would have reached had it not passed–and beyond.)

If this bill were about providing immediate help to an ailing economy, we wouldn’t have to wait so long to see the bulk of the cash.

Apologies for taking so long to update you on the second leg of the Obama America-Bashing World Tour ’09. I’ve been preparing for some travel myself (alas, on my own dime…don’t have taxpayers to foot my bill), so haven’t had the time to see if he’s keeping it up.

Well, he IS!

From his Thursday speech in Cairo:

9/11 was an enormous trauma to our country. The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals.

That makes his new total SEVEN nations to which he has traveled in order to bash us since being inaugurated as president of this awful place. As a refresher, in chronological order, they are:

Canada
Great Britain
France
Saudi Arabia
Mexico
Trinidad and Tobago
And now, Egypt!

Next stop, Dresden!

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot) from HQ

UPDATE: More apologies…I really should have read the president’s press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel from today before posting:

They should have been processed and tried and convicted. If they weren’t convicted, then they should not have been languishing in a facility like that, that became a symbol for many around the world of us not sticking to our ideals and our traditions and rule of law.

But it was done. And that’s the past. And now we have to move forward.

I’ve updated the map to include Germany now as well. Tomorrow will bring no news as the president has already expressed his contempt for America there.

We’ll be having the first on what may become monthly dinners for blog readers in Los Angeles this coming Tuesday, June 9 at 7 PM. E-mail me for details.

For just like the guy at my gym, we know how wonderful it is to find others with similar views and speak openly about our politics without fear of personal recrimination or professional retribution.

So used are we gay denizens of Hollywood to finding that our friends and acquaintances harbor left-of-center political views (or just ape those of their peers for professional advantage), that when we learn a gay friend doesn’t drink the local Kool-Aid, it’s like, well, to borrow an image familiar to residents of this town, it’s like an actor getting a major part in a feature film.

Today at the gym, I experienced just that. After my workout, I had planned only a few minutes of cardio to cool down, but started talking with a friendly acquaintance with whom I haven’t spoken in months, having primarily exchanged pleasantries in the recent past. When the topic of screenwriting came up, I mentioned I’d been too busy with my dissertation and this blog to work on my scripts. Then, after hesitating a bit before divulging the nature of the blog, I mentioned that I’d been getting a lot of writing assignments from a website (i.e., Pajamas) due in large part to the niche we’ve found–as a gay conservative website.

So excited was he to find a “fellow traveler” that he moved to the treadmill nearest mine so he could tell me of his political journey. A Hillary supporter in the Democratic primaries, he registered as a Republican after she lost. He doesn’t trust the President and reports that many of his friends, surprised to learn last fall about his support of John McCain, are coming around to his point of view.

Given his profession (he’s in the entertainment industry), he gave me permission to blog on our encounter provided I keep his identity private.

He mentioned another Republican at the gym, then I identified two others to him. It’s like we’re members of a secret society. 🙂

Just the way he describes how it is to encounter another non-leftist in this town. We make eye contact, talk in hushed voices, then hurry to find a place where we can express ourselves freely and share “war stories.”

So engaged were we in such banter that we lost track of the time. I ended up doing over 45 minutes of cool-down cardio when I had intended to do ony 15. And it wasn’t as tedious as it normally is. Not nearly. So, now I know how to work off those remaining 5-7 pounds, just find a few more conservatives at the gym to share “war stories” while I’m on a cardio machine.

While technically, their favorables are statitiscally indistinguishable, i current trendlines continue, Nancy Pelosi’s favorables will slip below those of Geoge W. Bush at the nadir of his popularity.  They’ve been in constant decline since the beginning of the Obama Administration while the former Vice President’s have spiked upwards.

Current 34% of Americans view the Democratic House Speaker favorably while 37% view the Republican former Vice President favorably.

No wonder Jim Geraghty is reporting that House Republicans Concur Pelosi Should Hit the Campaign Trail.

UPDATE:  Greg Sargent explains:

The Gallup poll finds that two of the leading officials on either side of the torture argument — Cheney and Nancy Pelosi — have equally poor favorability ratings. But here’s the key point: They are at parity because Cheney’s ratings have gone up and Pelosi’s have dropped during the period that both were heavily identified with the torture issue. . . . 

Top Dems (Obama aside) have taken Cheney about as seriously as a circus sideshow, chortling about his low approval ratings while rarely rebutting his actual arguments. Result: His claims have continually gone largely unchallenged, and he’s largely framed the debate. My bet is that this helps explain why Cheney seems to be rising in the polls and Pelosi is sinking: Dems have given Cheney an opening, and Cheney took it.

Via Instapundit.

Perhaps it’s his ownership non-takeover of two of the Big Three auto manufacturers. Maybe it’s his consistent belittling of his own country while representing it overseas.

Whatever it is, it has taken Barack Hussein Obama 136 days in office to reach parity on Rasmussen’s Daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Rasmussen takes a daily approval poll for the president and then subtracts the percentage of those who “Strongly Approve” of his performance from those who “Strongly Disapprove” to come up with what they call the Presidential Approval Index, which today for the first time stands at 0. As Rasmussen puts it, “That’s the highest level of strong disapproval and the lowest overall rating yet recorded.”

One would hope, as was screamed at Bush for eight years, that Obama might take this to heart and attempt to better represent his constituency which is growing ever more tired of his far-Left extreme policies. One mustn’t hold his breath, though.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot) from HQ

UPDATE (from Dan): Interesting to note the steady, gradual decline of his strong approval and the quick uptick in his strong disapproval. May have more to say about this later.