A few books I’ve read recently that I can recommend with a clear conscience. (Some books, you know, if you recommend them you feel bad about it.) The links take you to Amazon, where if you buy anything — even if it’s not the original item you clicked on — I get a tiny kickback, which helps support the site. So buy lots of stuff at Amazon! And check out these books, too.

“The Areas of My Expertise,” by John Hodgman. John Hodgman is perhaps best-known at the moment for being the P.C. in those P.C./Mac commercials. His book is an exercise in absurd erudition, being a faux-intellectual compendium of such “facts” as which presidents had hooks for hands and which colonial jobs involved eels. He also gives a lot of information about hoboes, including a list of 700 hobo names. The book is extremely funny, though it may be too much of a good thing. Best to read it in small doses, not big chunks.

“Consider the Lobster,” by David Foster Wallace. Another very smart man, a writer’s writer, a lover of words and a lover of footnotes, that is David Foster Wallace. This collection of previously published essays covers a variety of topics, from the porn academy awards to a lobster festival, from a Los Angeles talk show host to a review of a new book on grammar and usage (a review which extends to the ongoing debate among traditionalists and modernists). His writing is always intelligent and very often hilarious. As a lover of words myself, I found this one of the most intellectually exciting books I’ve read in a while.

“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” by David Eggers. David Eggers founded McSweeney’s, both the quarterly publication and the ongoing Internet concern. (John Hodgman and David Foster Wallace have both written for McSweeney’s, by the way, and I picture the two of them and David Eggers sitting around being smart and witty together.) This book is nonfiction, Eggers’ memoir of how his parents died and he found himself, at the age of 22, caring for his 8-year-old brother. It’s the mid-90s when this happens, and Eggers is heavily into the ironic hipster culture, trying to start a Gen-X magazine, trying to meet women, trying to raise his little brother at the same time. The book is affectionate, funny, poignant, and perhaps more meaningful to people Eggers’ age (e.g., myself) than others. It’s undeniably well-written, however, even if you have little tolerance for 22-year-old hipsters who fancy themselves brilliant writers.

It’s a lukewarm week for movies. Of the wide releases, we have two C+’s and a B-. At Rotten Tomatoes, B- is the cutoff for a “Fresh” rating, so I adopted that as my unofficial standard some years ago. But it’s tricky. A B- movie is “recommended,” but just barely, while a C+ is NOT recommended, but also just barely. Either way, B- or C+, we’re dealing with movies that are sort of OK but not particularly noteworthy. And you have plenty of those to choose from this weekend!

I saw “The Guardian” more than three weeks ago. Why they screened it so early, and subsequently had about six more screenings, I don’t know. Well, I do know. They were trying to build positive word-of-mouth. But why they thought this particular film was so worthy of it, THAT part I don’t know.

“School for Scoundrels,” meanwhile, is a Dimension product, which means I am not invited to screenings, as Paramount harassed Dimension into joining them in their boycott of me a couple months ago. However! The film screened in “sneak previews” last Saturday in about 1,500 theaters nationwide. Sneak previews are not promo screenings; they’re regular pay-for-a-ticket showings that are open to anyone. So I went to one of those and there WASN’T A DAMN THING PARAMOUNT COULD DO TO STOP ME. I’m hardcore like that. (And yes, of course I paid for a different movie and sneaked into “School for Scoundrels” so that Dimension wouldn’t get my money. I’m hardcore like that, too. The list of ways in which I am hardcore is lengthy.)

It had been a while since I’d been to one of these week-early “sneak preview” screenings. I recall going to a few back in Utah, either because I wanted to get the film out of the way without waiting for the press screening the following Monday or Tuesday, or because there wasn’t a press screening. The thing I remember about them, though, is that they were always packed. This one, for “School for Scoundrels,” had maybe 25 people in it. Was it because they put it on so many screens in so many cities, thus dispersing the audience? Did they not publicize the sneak previews well enough? Or were the ones in Utah always packed only because there was nothing else to do in Utah on a Saturday night?

The third major release this weekend is “Open Season,” an animated tale of whimsy featuring the voices of Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher. I knew I didn’t like Martin Lawrence when I could see him; turns out I don’t care for him when it’s just his voice, either.

In limited release is a documentary called “The U.S. vs. John Lennon” (no review yet, sorry), detailing the Nixon administration’s paranoia with regard to the ex-Beatle and his activist/bad-influence wife Yoko Ono, what with their anti-war protesting and love-ins and so forth. Lots and lots of footage from the early 1970s is included, along with new interviews of some of the participants.

The film was screened Wednesday night at Portland’s Fox Tower (an excellent arthouse multiplex), and sitting in the very front row was a man who was VERY passionate about the film’s subject matter. To wit: Every time a John Lennon song played, the man would raise his arms above his head and sway them back and forth. When Lennon would say something especially profound, the man would make his fingers into peace signs. When Richard Nixon or G. Gordon Liddy or some such person would appear, the man would flip them off. Over time, his reactions to the film became vocal, too, with shouts of “RIGHT ON!” or “[EXPLETIVE] YOU!”

Now, once was funny. The audience chuckled at his exuberance. All the subsequent outbursts, however, were annoying. Near the end of the film, with Lennon’s immigration status in question and Nixon winning re-election, it was finally too much for the insane man. He stood up with a roar and stomped toward the exit, apparently unable to take any more. But he calmed down and returned to his seat, swearing at the person near him who had said, “Go ahead and use that exit.”

You may know that these advance screenings always have a representative on hand to make sure things go smoothly. Most of these reps are impressively efficient and resourceful and are a joy to have nearby when there’s a problem. The rep on duty this time, however, is not particularly fond of confrontations, and thus spent the entire film pretending not to notice that there was a lunatic shouting things. FINALLY, with five minutes to go, he went and tried to escort the man out of the theater. They got as far as the aisle, and then the man said, “No, I’ll see the end!” and went and sat on the floor in front of the theater’s second section. The rep made no effort to prevent this, and the man stayed.

Afterward, as I left the theater and walked down the street, I spied the lunatic just ahead of me. He was ranting a bit, to no one in particular. He looked to be in his mid-50s, scrawny and stringy-haired. As I drew closer, I realized he wasn’t crazy, necessarily: He was stoned. Stoned out of his mind. (My first guess, actually, would have been drunk, but he didn’t smell like alcohol at all.) He said, “Did you see the movie?” Seeing this as my opportunity to have one of the post-movie confrontations that I always fantasize about but rarely engage in, I said, “Yes. Why were you yelling the whole time?”

“Was I yelling the whole time?”

“Yes! You kept shouting stuff at the screen!”

“Yeah.”

“Why were you doing that? What makes you think that’s OK? It wasn’t a concert, or a rally. It was a movie theater. You’re supposed to be quiet in movie theaters.”

He stonedly explained how he was very interested in the subject. I said, “Maybe you shouldn’t get stoned before you go to the movies.” He replied, “But I ALWAYS get stoned before I go to the movies!”

Now the whole thing was just funny, not annoying, because he was SOOOOO high. It was hilarious. He asked if he could talk to me while we waited for the light rail, and I said no because I had to go across the street to use the ATM (which was true). As I walked away, he shouted, “FINE, THEN!!”

Don’t do drugs, kids. And especially don’t do drugs and then go to the movies.

I don’t watch much TV news, having learned years ago that most of it is unintentionally superficial and unintentionally funny. (I prefer to watch things that are superficial and funny on purpose.) I do catch clips online now and then, however, when something is brought to my attention that’s worth noting.

Keith Olbermann’s 10-minute commentary on his MSNBC program “Countdown” earlier this week, which you can watch here, fits that description. I enjoyed Olbermann’s sense of humor when he was an L.A. sportscaster in the 1980s, and I’ve recently been entertained by his constant harassment of Bill O’Reilly on “Countdown.”

But I never would have expected the level of gravitas and incisive commentary that he displays here. He reminds me of Edward R. Murrow (whose commentaries were dramatized in “Good Night and Good Luck”) in that it’s not enough to read the transcript of his remarks. You have to watch his face and hear his delivery to get the full effect of the scathing things he’s saying.

(By the way, you can watch the Bill Clinton interview from two days earlier, which Olbermann’s piece is partly a response to, here.)

Having watched the Olbermann clip without much introduction and having been stirred by it, I poked around the Interwebs to see how the conservative blogs were responding. I don’t read many political blogs of any denomination, so I had to do some Googling to find conservative ones.

The few I found that mentioned it at all were depressingly predictable: They harp on Olbermann’s manner and delivery and don’t even try to rebut the things he actually SAID.

“Watching this douche clumsily trying to channel his paranoid rage into lofty rhetoric has been one of the true joys of blogging these past few weeks.”

“It appears to me like it’s almost as if he feels he has to top himself with each new commentary. Be more outlandish … more daring … more critical.”

“I think Olbermann’s ‘Special Comment’ testifies eloquently to his and his fans’ ‘issues’ and requires little elaboration.”

I guess the reasoning is that if you’re writing a conservative blog for conservative readers, you don’t need to explain why Olbermann is so wrong. Your readers already KNOW why. So I wish someone would explain it to me, a more-liberal-than-conservative person who doesn’t read the political blogs every day and doesn’t know why Olbermann’s commentary is so off-base. He seemed to me to be making excellent points and to be making them exceptionally well. He’s actually SAYING something, which is more than any of the bloggers (that I could find) did in response to him.

P.S. I know liberal bloggers do the same thing: A conservative says something, they automatically mock and ridicule him without regard for what he actually said. It’s the major reason I don’t read political blogs, because both sides are equally jackassish about it. The Olbermann thing is what happens to be on my mind at the moment, that’s all.

WEBMASTER’S NOTE: If you are reading this note (and I have a sneaky suspicion you are), you are seeing the new server. Congratulations!

As previously mentioned, we are moving ahead with our plans to switch to a new Web host, on account of our current company, Dreamhost, sucks mightily. (You may have noticed the site was down for a while Tuesday afternoon. Again.)

My fat brother Jeff, who handles the technical side of this site and uses small words to explain complicated things to me, said that the changeover will mean this: Sometime today (Wednesday), the comments feature on this blog will be turned off. This is because the switch from one server to another will be happening, and anything posted in the interim would get lost. Once the transition is complete — 24-48 hours — you’ll be able to post comments again.

In the meantime, everything else should work fine. You should still be able to browse the site and read stuff; you just won’t be able to add new comments on the blog. But considering you couldn’t do that at all up until a week or so ago, I imagine you can probably live a couple days without it again.

“Shark” (Thursdays, CBS): What’s not to love about James Woods? “Shark,” in which he plays a conniving defense attorney who must start using his weaselly powers for good when he joins the district attorney’s team, gives him snarky dialogue, a lovably arrogant attitude, and plenty of fellow lawyers to bounce his craziness off of. The show also gives him a teenage daughter to care for, and what appears to be an actual three-dimensional personality. I do have to take points off for using two cliché lines that no one in real life ever says. After being approached by the mayor to join the DA’s office, Woods says, “Give me one reason why I should do this.” (Only TV and movie characters say that.) And later, when Woods learns his daughter might move to New York with her mother, he is forlorn, causing a colleague to say, “You look like you just lost your best friend.” (Again: No one ever says that.) Woods compounds the offense by replying soberly, “I’m about to lose more than that.” Aaaaaagggghhh. Anyway, those two instances notwithstanding, the writing is sharp and fast-paced. I like the idea of the prosecution being as snaky about putting away criminals as the defenders are about exonerating them. But my TiVo verdict is that I have too many legal shows to watch as it is. If you have an open slot, however, I recommend this one.

“Heroes” (Mondays, NBC): One of the most-hyped new shows of the season turns out to be one of the best, too. The pilot episode of this series about young people discovering they have supernatural powers was only OK, save for a couple of unforeseen twists near the end. But previews for upcoming episodes show that the series — an “X-Men” clone, obviously, but so what? — has some very original ideas up its sleeve. If the writing becomes as interesting as the premise now that the exposition is out of the way, we could have a truly great series on our hands. TiVo verdict: Season Pass.

“Help Me Help You” (Tuesdays, ABC): I hate the title, but this sitcom (with no laugh track!) about a know-it-all shrink whose personal life is a wreck is actually pretty funny. Ted Danson plays the psychiatrist the same likable way he played Sam Malone on “Cheers”: cocky and dumb at the same time. Jane Kaczmarek (the mom from “Malcolm in the Middle”) plays his soon-to-be ex-wife, and the loonies who comprise Danson’s group therapy patients are all amusing in their own quirky ways. Writing seems snappy and the direction is deadpan, no huge wacky stuff. TiVo verdict: It’s a keeper.

More reviews of the new fall shows are trickling in….

“Men in Trees” (Fridays, ABC): Anne Heche, far more cute and likable than I would have suspected, plays a relationship coach who — get this — HAS TROUBLE WITH HER OWN RELATIONSHIPS!! I know, it’s crazy. So crazy it just … might … work. After her fiance cheats on her and dumps her, she flees to Elmo, Alaska, an isolated little town that’s just the place for her to clear her head and start over. Jokes about how backward the place is abound (They don’t know what soy lattes or spinning classes are! If she uses a hair dryer, it short-circuits the whole building!), and that sort of thing gets old pretty fast for me. But it’s a perky show, “Northern Exposure” meets “Ally McBeal,” and quite harmless. Let’s face it, if you’re home on Fridays nights, you might as well be watching a show about someone who can’t get a date either. TiVo verdict: Meh. It’s not for me.

“Smith” (Tuesdays, CBS): Ray Liotta plays a thief (art, jewels, etc.) whose wife and children think he’s just a regular ol’ corporate businessman. He has a team of heist-meisters who assist him in his grand operations, which in the pilot episode included ripping off a Chicago museum, and they all have personal lives of their own and oh WOW do I ever not care. I made it through half of the first episode before I quit. Evidently we’re supposed to find these people interesting solely because they’re criminals who lead double lives. But guess what? Characters have to say or do something noteworthy, funny, unusual, clever or dazzling in order for us to find them interesting. And these people speak generic dialogue about generic things, and don’t even seem to be enjoying themselves while they do it. TiVo verdict: It would be an insult to my TiVo to make it record this show.

“Jericho” (Wednesdays, CBS): Who says the apocalypse can’t be fun? Skeet Ulrich plays a 32-year-old guy who returns home to Jericho, Kan., after an unexplained five-year absence. The next day, a mushroom cloud is seen in faraway Denver, and all of Jericho’s communications technology ceases to function. What the sam hill is going on? Is it war? An accident? An attack? I really liked Gerald McRaney as Skeet’s dad, also the town’s mayor, trying to urge calm and reason among the citizens before panic sets in and the casualties begin. I like the idea of the show, and the general level of excitement in the first episode entices me to keep with it. TiVo verdict: Season Pass, at least for now.

“Kidnapped” (Wednesdays, NBC): After just one episode I already like this better than Fox’s generic “Vanished.” A millionaire’s teenage son is abducted and the millionaire calls in a specialist, a freelancer named Knapp (Jeremy Sisto) who specializes in, um, getting kidnapped people back. The cops and the FBI will just screw it up, the reasoning goes. Knapp GETS THE JOB DONE. Already cool, but then “Kidnapped” kicks it up a notch by bringing the FBI in anyway: The kid’s bodyguard was wounded in the abduction, which caught the attention of an FBI buddy of his (Delroy Lindo), and now the Feds are involved, like it or not. The FBI and Knapp butt heads over procedure, while I presume details about the family’s past will illuminate clues as to the culprit’s identity. The creator/writer is Jason Smilovic, whose “Karen Sisco” was an unwatched gem a few years ago and whose recent film “Lucky Number Slevin” is worth watching. “Kidnapped” feels smarter and more intriguing than its plain premise (it’s just a kidnapping, after all) would suggest. Minus points for using a song by 3 Doors Down in the pilot. You might just as well stab chopsticks in my ears.TiVo verdict: Me likey. Season Pass.

I used to know a fellow named Scott Haycock, aka Puppet Guy, a talented puppet-maker and all-around creative type who was lots of fun at parties and who would sometimes freak people out. (It may be apocryphal, but I’m told he kept a small vial of his own blood in his refrigerator.) But who cares? He made me laugh.

For a short time in 2001-2002, he produced a children’s show, populated mostly by puppets, for Provo’s local cable channel. I do not remember the name of the show, or how many episodes were made, or whether it actually ever aired on television. But one time he asked me to appear as a guest on the show, singing a song about safety, which was evidently a favorite theme among the puppet characters. Scott wrote the song, setting it to the tune of the Mormon hymn “Choose the Right.” I revised some of Scott’s lyrics, jazzed up the music, and performed it with two of the puppet characters coming in on the choruses.

Scott subsequently sent me a digital copy of the performance, which has sat on my hard drive for more than four years, waiting for me to do something with it. It is now on YouTube, for all the world to see.

That’s Scott as “Li’l Scott” at the beginning; I don’t remember the name of the other puppet, nor of its puppeteer, nor of the cameraman. (Sorry.) I do remember that I had the lyrics taped to the far right side of the piano, just out of camera range, and that we did three takes, of which this was evidently the best (?) one.

The lyrics, in case you can’t make them out:

Safety first, everywhere you look there’s danger
Safety first, there’s peril all around
Safety first, there’s poison in the kitchen
Live through every day both safe and sound

Safety first! Safety first!
Let safety mark the way before
Safety first! Safety first!
Let zero accidents be your goal

Safety first, don’t drive faster than you’re supposed to
Safety first, don’t put salt into your eyes
Safety first, especially when handling chicken
“Danger is fun” is one of TV’s lies

Safety first! Safety first!
Let safety mark the way before
Safety first! Safety first!
Let living till you’re 90 be your goal

Safety first, the Drano’s not for drinking
Safety first, don’t try to touch the sun
Safety first, don’t leave the house at nighttime
It’s better to be safe than to have fun

Safety first! Safety first!
Let safety mark the way before
Safety first! Safety first!
Let not dying gruesomely be your goal
Let not falling into quicksand be your goal
Let not losing any fingers be your goal

Our recent server problems have convinced us once and for all that we need real, dedicated Web-hosting services, something with reliable equipment and on-the-spot tech support. Naturally, this sort of service — you know, GOOD service — costs more than we’ve been paying. So we’re switching to a new host, one that claims not to have had even one second of downtime in four years, and believe me, we are paying extra for this level of reliability.

So this seems like a good time to mention that EricDSnider.com costs money to operate yet brings in precious little revenue. It used to bring in slightly more, but then we de-subscriptionized “Snide Remarks,” rendering a once slightly profitable venture completely profit-free.

How can I help EricDSnider.com? you ask. The ways are many.

- Buy stuff. There’s merchandise, you know, over here at the merchandise page, reasonably priced and just as reasonably entertaining.

- Support our advertisers. When you click on a link to Amazon or iTunes and wind up buying something, we get a tiny kickback — even if the thing you buy wasn’t the item you originally clicked on. As long as you got to the site from EricDSnider.com, it counts. So next time you’re thinking of doing some Amazon shopping, come here first, click on any Amazon link anywhere on the site (almost every movie review has one), and THEN do your shopping. Same with iTunes. And if you haven’t already joined Netflix, may I suggest you do so? And may I also suggest that you click on the link I just gave you when you do?

- Be an advertiser. If you’ve got something to pimp, be it merchandise, a service or a Web site of your own, you can do your pimping here on the site. For $10 you get 5,000 impressions — 5,000 pairs of eyes seeing your ad, seeing that you’ve chosen to advertise on such a classy site, seeing that your product/service/Web site must surely be a thing of refinement. Text ads in “In the Dark” are available, too. In either case, you can e-mail me for details.

-Just give us money. You know how sometimes you just want to throw some money around without actually getting anything in return? We get that feeling all the time. If such a mood should strike you, feel free to donate a couple bucks here. (That link is also found under the “Buy Stuff” tab on the navigation bar at the top of every page.)

OK, that’s all for the shameful pleas for financial support. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming of making fun of things.

Wow, we have a lot to catch up on here. These are e-mails sent to symone.raven@gmail.com, an address that does NOT belong to singer/actress/chubster Raven-Symone. Only stupid people think it does. Stupid people, and children. (I recommend this prior post for background on how this fake e-mail address came to be.)

CHILDREN’S LETTERS TO RAVEN-SYMONE

Dec. 1, 2005:
hey raven sup? it’s me brittany again!!! how are you? i am doing a journey across america project the state i have is pennslvania, Haven you ever been there ?

brittany

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Continue reading…

On behalf of our crappy Web host, Dreamhost, I apologize for the downtime that plagued us for most of Friday afternoon. They’ve been having trouble lately over at Dreamhost, and their assurances that the problem is fixed become less convincing the more downtime we have.

The depressing thing is, Dreamhost is still the best Web host we’ve ever had. Sigh.