IT'S FRIDAY, MAY THE WEEKEND BEGIN... go PATS!

Stephen Colbert Lands O'Reilly

O'Reilly, Colbert to appear on each other's shows This puppy was on T.V. tonight, I had been looking forward to it for quite some time, and it was totally worth it. O'Reilly was generally a good sport, but he did not know how to react to Stephen Colbert, and he was genuinely nervous to be there. At first he came out slightly antagonistic, after about a third of the audience audibly boo-ed him. He said at one point in the interview that it was a bad move to go on the show, and Colbert replied "I hope we can convince you otherwise". At one point O'Reilly almost alluded to what I believe is a truth, that he and Colbert both have one thing in common, both or their shows are acts. The best laugh was when Colbert showed his book, he had a copy with a "30% off" sticker, which was just priceless. Genuinely the interview was a bit disappointing, because little substance was discussed, and it seemed shorter than normal.

Anyway, I must apologize for my absence this week. I've had some bad luck falling asleep on the futon, then waking up at an un-godly hour.

U.S. official: Chinese test missile obliterates satellite

OK... honestly, I get it, the Chinese can shoot down a hunk of junk weather satellite, but honestly has the U.S. military not foreseen that other countries may develop this capability. Are our satellites really that vulnerable? Apparently so.... perhaps there is a reason we can't make them stealth? The following recent article speculates on this a bit: Stealth satellites
Cold War myth or operational reality? I found the possibility of using "decoy satellites" to throw off adversaries really amusing.

The most ridiculous portion of the Chinese Satellite news article (see title of section for link) was the reference to a policy in which W has declared the United States military supreme overlords in space. One notable portion of this assertion is that space should be free... accept when you piss off America. Its a good thing we are such a noble nation with every one's best interests at heart (cough.. cough... excuse me tickle in my throat).

And the Idiot of the week award goes to: (drum roll please) Governor Rick Perry of Texas, who approved this little whoops Ricky? Ted Nugent fires up GOP crowd, and not in a good way

At the rentals: I watched "The World According to Garp" which was a great book, and a not so good movie. Good cast, but a poor production out of the early 80s. Some scenes were really well done and a few even had a certain artistic flare, such as one bit where Garp (Robin Williams) looks through venetian blinds to see memories of the past. Most of the movie was crap, poorly directed, bad acting, a bad script, you name it. It was a let down, but I'll likely still give it three stars out of five on Netflix, but only because the book was so good. I felt they changed a lot of things about the way the characters acted which made the film seem more farcical than it should have come off. Jenny Fields came off too confident, Garp in the book feared driving, and didn't like reckless drivers. In the movie they show him repeatedly driving in a haphazard manner to make his kids laugh... which was really is against who he was as a character, and another seen where he is angry at a serial speeder going through his neighborhood. They also diminished to a great extent Garp's weakness for women, which changes the significance of later events in the story. You had a tough time "feeling the scenes". The story teeters between dark comedy and drama. I feel the director had a difficult time separating the two.

I've got to admit, I was a bit astonished when I learned they made a movie of this book. It would be a herculean effort to accomplish it properly. I think the choices of what was included were bizarre and left a lot of holes in the story. It was though at one point a lot more had been filmed, and then they just went back and cut things out of the middle. Really to do this story justice, I feel it would need to be a miniseries... and it could definitely be one with several entertaining installments.

WELL.... have a good weekend all...... and don't worry too much about the satellites, I'm sure they'll be just fine, until China attacks Taiwan (penciled in for whenever we attack Iran and/or Syria).