Listen to the Lion

The Amazing Race

Some possible alternative shows while the writers' strike is on, from my Examiner column.

A history lesson from the gentleman scholar Leroy Troy

Borat in Dixie

Both Borat and the Dixie Chicks' whinefest Shut Up & Sing are really bad movies. Read why here.

Below is not a doctored photo.

The Morning After

What I'm afraid might happen two years from now, kind of.

A southern accent

Go here to take a neat little test that measures from where in the country you're from based on your speech.

Even though I'm an Ohio native, I scored 74% Southerner for 3 reasons:

a) I'm from the part of Ohio south of I-70 and the National Road, Old U.S. 40, which has as much in common with Dixie as it does the Midwest.

b) My father was born in eastern Kentucky, along with three of my grandparents, and my maternal grandfather is from east Tennessee. I also spent summers in Kentucky as a kid.

c) I consciously affect a southern manner of speech, partly because I'm proud of my Scots-Irish Appalachian heritage and partly just to sound like Clint Eastwood in "The Outlaw Josey Wales."

From Washington's quaint little alternative newspaper

The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest gives awards for intentionally bad prose fiction, most of which is quite hilarious.

If there were an award for unintentionally bad column writing - maybe we could call them the Mollies or the Dowdies - this column would be a prizewinner.

Wabi-Sabi

LttL reader Corrie passed along the following item she came across in Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life:

Coining a new world to describe how she feels sometimes, Rosenthal defines "wabi-sabi" this way: "I'm talking about complete happiness and complete sadness simultaneously, the way Van Morrison's music makes you feel, let's say."

I'd have to agree, Van's good at flipping that particular switch, especially in songs like "Astral Weeks," "In the Garden," "Queen of the Slipstream," and a masterpiece from the new album Magic Time, "Celtic New Year."

The Sharpshooters

Take a look at these two clips (in the Windows Media Player format); they are the funniest things I have seen in a while.

Download target_practice_1.mpeg

Download target_practice_2.mpeg