The Scooter and The Prosecutor

We left our story on Friday when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald ruled that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Scooter Libby "zealously pursued information about a critic who said the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to make the case for war" resulting in a five-count indictment.

The view of the president and vice president, as usual, differs from the mainstream: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is doing a good job, they say. The big question is: will Libby testify against Cheney to avoid a long prison sentence? On one hand, he has being given up fairly easily to the wolves of prosecution (I doubt the resignation was voluntary). On the other hand, Scooter knows all too well the tactics this administration will use to hunt down nay-sayers.

Will this patsy sing like a canary? I can't wait to find out.

...And Condoleezza Rice As The Devil

USA Today was accused of "demonizing" a photograph of Condi Rice. On the left is the USA Today photo, on the right is the original. USA Today removed the allegedly altered photo from its website with an apology of sorts:

Editor's note: The photo of Condoleezza Rice that originally accompanied this story was altered in a manner that did not meet USA TODAY's editorial standards. The photo has been replaced by a properly adjusted copy. Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance. In this case, after sharpening the photo for clarity, the editor brightened a portion of Rice's face, giving her eyes an unnatural appearance. This resulted in a distortion of the original not in keeping with our editorial standards.

The thing is, I've met Condi Rice. Her eyes really are like that. It's a very sore spot for her. She's had to live with it since her childhood on Three Mile Island. I thought USA Today handled it as nicely as they could. They muted the eyes and moved on.

- Rice won't rule out U.S. troops in Iraq in 10 years [USA Today]

- DEMONIZING CONDI [Michelle Malkin]

The Baked Ziti Radio Hour: Episodes 11 & 12

The magic is here again! We're back with two new episodes of Iceland's favorite podcast (we don't know why either), available for download here:

Episode 11
Episode 12

And we're finally up on iTunes and Yahoo! Podcasts! So look for us in the respective directories, or use this feed to cut and paste so you can download BZRH on iTunes:

feed://www.bakedziti.net/podcasts/bakedzitipodcast.xml

Just open iTunes, selected ADVANCED in the menu bar and SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST. This should actually work (feel free to email me if it doesn't)

Lookin' For The Heart Of Saturday Night

With every fall the leaves on the trees are falling down: red, yellow, orange, and brown...

Oh yeah, and it also prime season for bitching about Saturday Night Live's painful decline. It seems to happen every year at exactly the same time. This has been itself a source of unending comedy for me, as different generations seem to disagree as to when SNL's golden years ended. The youngins' seem to pine for the Phil Hartman years, for example. For me, the show's history goes something like:

1975-1980: The True Golden Years
1980-early 1981: Jean Domanian takes over, with painful expletive-deleting results, but at least Captain Beefheart was a musical guest.
1981-1984: The Eddie Murphy Show (not that it wasn't brilliant, it just wasn't an ensemble).
1984-1995: Solely depending on the cast, equal parts brilliant, boring and cringe-worthy.
1995-present: Abysmal, unwatchable. Unless, like me, you get off on train-wrecks (apart from Robert Smigel, who has been consistently brilliant throughout his tenure with the show)

Well, a local comedy troupe finally decided to stop bitching and actually do something about it. At the Juvie Hall Theater, Saturday Night Rewritten takes the previous night's show and vastly improves upon SNL's poor excuse for sketches. The group (who, unlike SNL's "writers," are unpaid), having watched the show, meet on Sunday, go through the sketches and rewrite them. Says head writer Erik Marcisak, "Even if the sketch is only halfway decent, we wrote it in just an hour and a half, and it got put up in front of an audience that genuinely laughed. Ask any of our writers, and they will brag about that."

-SATURDAY NIGHT DEAD [Page Six]

-SATURDAY NIGHT'S ALL RIGHT FOR REWRITING

Michael Jackson As Juror

How hard up is Santa Barbara, CA for jurors anyway? None of the residents seem to have daytime employment. But...

It seems that they're SO hard up, they would consider Michael Jackson a worthy vessel.

"It's just one of those ironies of life that he'd be called as a juror," said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola School of Law who monitored Jackson's

Irony, huh? I mean I would love to see this screening process at work:

Judge: "Have you ever been....(sigh).. Exempted! Next!"

I mean, could it possibly go any other way? Every judge in the nation knows Michael's life story at this point, not that there is much of a chance that Jackson will serve on any jury due to his dual citizenship [Editor's Note: Michael Jackson is in the process of changing his primary residency to Bahrain].

-Michael Jackson Called for Jury Service [AP]

If You Don't Read This Entry, Well Then I Oughta....

The American Society of Magazine Editors has named the Top Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years. Coming in at #7 is my personal favorite of all time: National Lampoon's "Death" Issue from January 1973, better known by its simple but effective headline: "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Shoot This Dog." It's one of the greatest examples of copy EVER. It strikes fear, horror, paranoia ("how will..they KNOW whether I buy it or not...I don't underst..") and disgust at the same time (and, no, I am not advocating the harming of animals in any way). Ironically, no editor in the world would green light this cover today.

Here are some other picks from the fabulous 40. Some you may remember (John Lennon's last Rolling Stone cover [the last one featuring a new photo of him, anyway], Demi Moore's pregnant belly on Vanity Fair), and some you might not, like 90% of them (Man on The Moon? That made the cover of LIFE? I'm kidding). And, there seems to be a 2-way tie for 29th and 33rd place and a 5-way tie for 37th place. When there's a 5-way tie for 37th place, you know you're living in the age of mediocrity.

Enjoy:

1. Rolling Stone, Jan. 22, 1981, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

2. Vanity Fair, August 1991, Demi Moore.

3. Esquire, April 1968, Muhammad Ali.

4. The New Yorker, March 29, 1976, Saul Steinberg drawing of Manhattan.

5. Esquire, May 1969, Andy Warhol.

6. The New Yorker, Sept. 24, 2001, Illustration of World Trade Center.

7. National Lampoon, January 1973, "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog."

8. Esquire, October 1966, "Oh my god -- we hit a little girl."

9. Harper's Bazaar, September 1992, "Enter the Era of Elegance."

10. National Geographic, June 1985, Afghan refugee.

11. Life, April 30, 1965, 18-week-old fetus.

12. Time, April 8, 1966, "Is God Dead?"

13. Life, Special Issue, 1969, man on the moon.

14. The New Yorker, Dec. 10, 2001, illustration of New York City map.

15. Harper's Bazaar, April 1965.

16. The Economist, Sept. 10-16, 1994, photo of camels, "The trouble With mergers."

17. Time, June 21, 1968, "The Gun in America."

18. ESPN, June 29, 1998, Michael Jordan.

19. Esquire, December 2000, Bill Clinton.

20. Blue, October 1997.

21. Life, Nov. 26, 1965, Vietcong prisoner with eyes and mouth taped.

22. George, October/November 1995, Cindy Crawford.

23. The Nation, Nov. 13, 2000, George W. Bush.

24. Interview, December 1972, Andy Warhol.

25. Time, Sept. 14, 2001, World Trade Center.

26. People, March 4, 1974, Mia Farrow.

27. Entertainment Weekly, May 2, 2003, The Dixie Chicks.

28. Life, April 16, 1965, dying pilot and helicopter crew chief.

29. (tie) Playboy, October 1971.

29. (tie) Fortune, Oct. 1, 2001, man covered in ashes near World Trade Center.

31. Newsweek, Nov. 20, 2000, image of Al Gore/George W. Bush.

32. Vogue, May 2004, Nicole Kidman.

33. (tie) Newsweek, July 30, 1973, Nixon White House and tape recorder

33. (tie) Wired, June 1997, "Pray."

35. New York, June 8, 1970, "Free Leonard Bernstein!"

36. People, Sept. 15, 1997, black-and-white portrait of Princess Diana.

37. (tie) Details, February 1989, Cyndi Lauper.

37. (tie) Fast Company, August/September 1997, "The Brand Called You."

37. (tie) Glamour, August 1968, Katiti Kironde II

37. (tie) National Geographic, October 1978, gorilla with camera.

37. (tie) Time, April 14, 1997, Ellen DeGeneres.

-Top Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years [AP]

Michael O'Donoghue Quote Of The Day: #2

The following is an excerpt from "How To Write Good" by Michael O'Donoghue [National Lampoon, March 1971]:

Lesson 2-The Ending

All too often, the budding author finds that his tale has run its course and yet he sees no way to satisfactorily end it, or, in literary parlance, "wrap it up." Observe how easily I resolve this problem:

Suddenly, everyone was run over by a truck.
-the end-

If the story happens to be set in England, use the same ending, slightly modified:

Suddenly, everyone was run over by a lorry.
-the end-

If set in France:

Soudaincment, tout le monde etait ecrass par un camion.
-finis-

You'll be surprised at how many different settings and situations this ending applies to. For instance, if you were writing a story about ants, it would end "Suddenly, everyone was run over by a centipede." In fact, this is the only ending you ever need use.*

*Warning - if you are writing a story about trucks, do not have the trucks run over by a truck. Have the trucks run over by a mammoth truck.

To read "How To Write Good" in its entirety, go here.

Apocalypse Now!

Well, I'm not a terribly religious man, but I said about forty novenas when I read the news about Tom and his beard's impending spawn. It is an absolute sign of the apocalypse. No question.

It's not the only one, mind you. Here are some others:

• Nick and Jessica's failure to divorce
• Lennon: The Musical
• The Rolling Stones still touring??
• David Spade having a career
• A Best-Selling book about caring too much about what people think (this REALLY disturbs me)
• John Fogerty returning to Fantasy Records

Oh, there are several other signs. For example, the other day I saw a dog attempting to mount a cat. And, yes, I see the occasional swarm of locusts in my back yard. But I can't figure out how any female would willingly procreate with that Oprah-couch-hopping freak.

- Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes Expecting [AP]

Ashlee Simpson's Continuing Career: Proof That There Is No God?

Here's what critics have been saying about Ashlee Simpson for the past year:

"alarmingly untalented"

"...fodder for public ridicule..."

"That she didn't have a lick of talent was instantly apparent..."

And yet, Ashlee is being asked to perform for a second time on the equally awful Saturday Night Live after making a spectacle of of her talenless self and worse, blaming her band for it. Now, a year later, Simpson has been offered the show again. Sure, it's guaranteed high ratings (everyody loves a train wreck), but eventually even Ashlee's trainwreck appeal will soneday run out.

To ensure this, you can sign the Stop Ashlee Simpson petition here.


Ashlee's "SNL" Do-Over [E! Online]

The Adventures of Nicolas Cage

Overrated "actor" Nicolas Cage (pictured above in the only worthwhile film he ever made) and his wife gave birth on Monday to the couple's first child together, a son they named Kal-el, as in the birth name of Superman. The child's full name is Kal-el Coppola Cage, the middle name being a huge clue as to how it's possible for such a terrible actor to get so much screen work.

Well, I hope the child develops some sort of super strength to avoid being savagely beaten at school for having such a name. Kal-el will be attacked by people who a) think his first name is stupid, b) hated Apocalypse Now and Francis's sub-par wine collection, and c) just plain hate Nicolas Cage.

I'm gonna go one better than Mr. Cage on this one: my first child will be named Spiderman, regardless of its gender. Spiderman Coppola Hilton Rockefeller Getty Cawley. Now all I have to do is convince my wife to have kids.

- Nicolas Cage gives Superman's birth name to son [Reuters]

Havin' Fun With Rolling Edits

Years ago, I worked with a friend of mine who videotaped and edited weddings, bar-mitzvahs and the like. In the editing process, we used to try to intercut scenes from movies featuring celebrities at formal attire parties (i.e., Frank Sinatra in High Society) so it would look like interactive footage. While editing these clips, the editing machine would roll about two seconds before and after the edit point, so we would hear it play backwards ad nauseam. We got to hear these so many times that we eventually became obsessed with how hilarious they were. Below is an example. It's a scene from Goodfellas featuring Ray Liotta gambling and shouting very loudly showing a mouth big enough to drive a truck through. The first clip is the scene played forwards and backwards at regular speed, the second is forward and backwards at a slower speed.

Download the clips below. Enjoy.

Henry_Backwards.mov
Henry_SlowMo.mov

The Baked Ziti Radio Hour: Episodes 9 & 10 Are Here At Last!

That's right, cats and kittens. We've done it once again. We've stuck the proverbial feather in our hats and called it Marconi. In other words, two new episodes of America's favorite podcast (they don't have rating systems for these things yet, do they?) are available for download here:
Episode 9
Episode 10

And here's the new feed for you to cut and paste so you can download BZRH on iTunes:

feed://www.bakedziti.net/podcasts/bakedzitipodcast.xml

Just open iTunes, selected ADVANCED in the menu bar and SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST. This should actually work (feel free to email me if it doesn't)